Which is a better guide to picking a hotel - tour books like the AAA guide or rough guide, or the on line sites like hotels.com. I have noticed that there does not appear to be a lot of overlap. ?
A four star hotel from Mobil is NOT the same as a four star hotel rated by Hotwire or Priceline, they use the star system to purposely mislead people into thinking it is.
Obviously Hotwire and Priceline have a vested interest in saying only good things because they want to sell you something.
Mobil only wants to sell you their book, which most of us get out of the library. AAA diamond is a service of the AAA club, so you’ve already bought their service.
When looking at reviews for anything think “Is there any reason for this reviewer or site to lie?” If so look elsewhere cause you know they’ll be lying if they can hope to selll you something.
Even the alleged unbiased reviews by guests on sites like Tripadvisor are not foolproof. There’s no way to prove who’s writing them, and the staff of hotels have been known to write glowing reviews. That being said, if you read a lot of those type of reviews, you can usually separate the wheat from the chaff. I got really nice hotels in Florence and in Venice from reviews on Tripadvisor.