The island of Maui is best described as one of the world’s hidden treasures. TripAdvisor Media Group operates 25 travel brands including TripAdvisor, Airfarewatchdog, 8 9 10 BookingBuddy, Citymaps, Cruise Critic , Family Vacation Critic, FlipKey , GateGuru, 11 Holiday Lettings, Holiday Watchdog , Independent Traveler, Jetsetter, lafourchette, 12 Niumba , OneTime, SeatGuru , SmarterTravel, Tingo, TravelPod , Tripbod, VacationHomeRentals, Viator, 13 and VirtualTourist 1 TripAdvisor operates websites internationally.

What you get: Complimentary daily breakfast; room upgrade, either guaranteed at the time of booking or at check-in based on availability; early check-in, late checkout, availability permitting for most (sometimes guaranteed); and complimentary Wi-Fi.

Where once we might have trusted TripAdvisor as a place to find unbiased information about hotels, restaurants and travel services like tours and cooking classes, now they own the booking engines, earning commissions on every transaction through the TripAdvisor website as well as fees charged to companies using those booking engines if they want access to traffic.” Travelers should know that the hotels, restaurants and travel services heavily promoted at the front and center of any given TripAdvisor page most likely paid to be there, which is a blatant conflict of interest if they expect the user ratings to mean anything at all.

That doesn’t mean I never scanned the reviews as part of my research, but in the ten years of doing hotel reviews I only remember one time when a series of almost identical incidents recounted in TripAdvisor’s user reviews helped me discover an unscrupulous hotel owner was purposefully overbooking one of his nicer hotels, then claiming there was a flood or other last minute problem with the room to funnel guests into his less attractive property down the road.

National Travel Advisor Day on May 1 is almost here, and the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) is launching a toolkit to help members of the industry educate the traveling public, policymakers and the media on the value advisors provide to consumers and the overall travel industry.