Exclusive Feature: When it comes to booking a hotel, fewer and fewer people are relying on word of mouth and travel magazines to tell them where to spend the night, traveling in the time of web fluency is a game of online reviews and recommendations.

Vacationers trust sites like Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet like they would a close friend, a very well traveled close friend. 

The first thing that you see when scrolling through the lists of hotels on travel websites is the price and then the user rating. With a site rating lower than 50 percent it is unlikely that many people will give that listing a second click,barring an irresistibly low price.  But once past the ratings and in the process of narrowing down between a few options, the tech-savvy traveler will stack the reviews against each other. 

Certain comments can be used to see if that particular hotel suits your needs, for instance, "Great for animals."  Others are cautionary, like, "Price ended up being twice what I expected. SO MANY FEES!" The two words that can be a lifesaver for travelers to read but damning to any hotel are"Bed Bugs."

It has become a common courtesy for those who go by reviews to also leave reviews after their stay to help others have a good trip.

Even the most prestigious hotels know that they can't afford to have an unflattering review, but some have gone so far as to see if their guests can afford to leave a bad review.

The Hudson hotel, Union Street Guest House, charged wedding parties a $500 fine for every bad review that they left on travel websites, according to The Telegraph.  The fine was to be repaid only when the negative review was removed from the Internet.

Oddly enough, when news broke about the pricey policy, former guests that had had an unpleasant experience at the inn took to their keyboards and left an overwhelming amount of negative ratings and reviews.

Needless to say, the website of the Union Street Guest House, no longer lists this policy.

The high-end English hotel The Cove tried to attract good reviews with discounts.  The New York Times reported that Trip Advisor was surprised by the unusual amount of glowing recommendations after the hotel offered a 10 percent discount for guests that sung their praises.

It is common to find job listings online for professional review writers, because it is worth the expense to look good in the comment section.

Naturally for the travel sites an inauthentic review is bad business. 

According to the Cornell Daily Sun, the researchers at the university have been working on an algorithm to sort out the real from the fake reviews.  They say to beware of any comment that uses too many superlatives without enough descriptive detail.

While being a reviewer used to be a job title at a publication, it has evolved into a normal part of staying in a hotel, like checking out before noon and stealing the mini soaps.

This is strictly an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval from 4Hoteliers.com is not permitted.

Angela Waters is a correspondent based in Berlin, Germany. She studied at the American University of Paris and is now working with journalists across the globe as part of international journalism organization, Associated Reporters Abroad (ARA). Since the age of four, she has been collecting stamps in her passport and finds herself torn between flying to her favorite places and taking a train headed for somewhere new.