Online Reviews of Hotels and Restaurants Flourish

reports the New York Times

So, the main stream media are starting to pay attention to the topic of online reviews and other UGC.

As always, the seem to look for the controversy in the story, in this case the immediate demise of print guides but Steve Kaufer didn’t bite! Good. Reminds me of what was said about the same immediate demise of all travel agents when web 1.0 came barreling in. Hasn’t happened either.

What tools to use will remain a personal preference of each individual traveler. The trust factor of anonymous reviews is already the second highest after personal recommendations by family or friends. The combination of social networking and reviews such as used by VibeAgent and valuing those from my personal network higher will add a new dimension of usefulness.