How objective are reviews on travel sites?

I admit, whenever I plan a trip abroad I look at sites like Booking Com or Tripadvisor and read all the reviews about the hotel or restaurant I want to visit.

I must also admit I write reviews myself. But - you can believe me or not - I try to be quite objective. I won't say something is excellent when it's only halfway good. I won't write it's bad when there are good point to be found.

But how objective are others? I know for certain there are people who paint everything black, or who give a bad review because of a futility.

So the question is what you can believe. While admitting I read all the reviews about a property, I never form an opinion before I have first-hand experience.

I guess this is because I'm a teacher. I try to pass on objectivity to my students. I also never take for granted what they write in essays. I always tell them I'm able to check whether they have copied and pasted the info from one or other website. Sometimes it's funny to see the faces change when I say this. Lots of students don't know how to look up information anymore. They take everything for granted and when it's somewhere on Google, it must be the truth...

Once I read in one or other review on Tripadvisor that a certain hotel was not worth a lot. We had booked there however, and on arrival we could detect none of the minus points this review had mentioned. Some things are so obvious, you know. When you stay in a city center in England during the weekend, you know there will be a lot of noise outside. The English like to drink themselves into oblivion, that's well known. So demand a room not facing the street side, then you won't have to say the hotel rooms are too noisy.

And what do you do when something doesn't meet your approval? In a hotel, I would go to the reception and state my problem. When they are not receptive, I demand to see the manager. Never had problems there. And in a restaurant, when something is not right, we just never return. An example of this is Old Fisher in Knokke-Heist. Used to be a very nice restaurant when the father was the cook, but when the son took over it changed. The last time we dined there we had ordered the menu with a pairing of wines. What we got was the one glass... So we never ever go to eat there anymore. Their loss!

What's your take on this?