"Subscribers" to this Web site might have noticed that, in October 2009, some upstart organisation called "TripAdvisor" started its own review system for persons visiting WHS -and it had UNESCO backing too!!

The results of the first year's reviews have just been published. They got 244,690 feedback reviews BUT only covered 789 of the sites. You need to look at THIS site if you want to see reviews of 838 sites!!

A look at the "10 most recommended sites" is of interest too - It has considerable similarity to the "top 10 most visited sites" by subscribers to this Web site - but, rather surprisingly, lacks ANY site from France, whereas "our list" has Paris and Versailles as 1st and 4th most visited. Yes I know this isn't the same as "recommended" but is a reasonable proxy, given the similarity of the remainder of the top 10 across the 2 lists. As has been commented on before, our "top 10 most visited" contains NO site outside Europe - and the Trip Advisor list only has 1 - Angkor Wat. The TripAdvisor list is likely to be heavily skewed towards US recommendations too I guess - which makes the lack of French and more non-European sites a bit more unexpected.

The top 10 sites in best/worst condition contain some rather surprising entries. It is difficult to see how these could have risen to the top of the list in pure statistical terms since some of them surely can't have been visited by enough people to figure very highly even if every single visitor voted for them?


See
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=301984