Web Buzz: TripExpert combines reviews to score hotels

Are you sick of searching through crowd-sourced hotel reviews while trying to figure out if the bed will be good enough? A solution is here.

Name: www.TripExpert.com

What it does: TripExpert assigns a hotel a score based on reviews in 20-plus publications, including guidebooks, magazines and newspapers. These include, but are not limited to, Travel & Leisure, Frommer’s, Fodor’s, Tablet, Michelin Guide, Lonely Planet and the New York Times. It features 500-plus destinations and continues to grow.

What’s hot: If you are looking for a short list of distinctive hotels, you’ve come to the right place. Use the “Explore” section to find collections of Top Destinations and Top Hotels. Once you click on a destination (you also can jump to your city using the search bar), you’ll find a page of hotels with their scores, description and number of reviews. You can also filter by price (budget is less than $150, mid-range is $150 to $300 and luxury is more than $300 a night). Click on the hotel’s page and you can read either an excerpt or the complete review in its original publication. You can locate the hotel on a map and see if rooms are available. If you’re ready to book, TripExpert leads you to online booking sites where you can make a reservation.

What’s not: The ratings are too generous. The website says that TripExpert scores range between 60 and 100. “A hotel that scores 95, whether it’s in Paris or Penang, is an outstanding hotel.” Be prepared for hotels rated 80 to 90 to be considered “excellent.” It’s hard to look at a hotel that’s ranked in the 80s and think of it as more than a B rating