&gt;pretty much the only thing that is going to be useful<p>IMO that&#x27;s an overstatement. I find Zagat, Yelp, and Amazon reviews all useful--however imperfect. That said, however unpopular this opinion may be in our crowdsourced world, professional reviews&#x2F;ratings tend to be more reliable than random ones on the Internet. The problem is that professional reviews don&#x27;t scale, especially for local businesses. The New York Times restaurant reviews aren&#x27;t bad but that&#x27;s NYC and, even in that case, a lot of the reviews are going to be quite old.<p>So, in an ideal world, there might be armies of professional evaluators of hotels, restaurants, and other businesses--but that&#x27;s not the world that we live in. (Films are one of the few areas where you can get a pretty good pool of professional and semi-professional reviewers.)