TripAdvisor Best Zoos/Aquariums 2017

jayjds2

jayjds2

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
I know most people don't care about these ratings too much, but figured I'd post them in case anyone is interested. It seems that the individual category for United States (and any others there may have been) are now gone, with only the worldwide rankings:

Zoos
Best Zoos - the World - TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards

1. Loro Parque
2. San Diego Zoo
3. Chester Zoo
4. Singapore Zoo
5. Prague Zoo
6. Saint Louis Zoo
7. Tiergarten Schoenbrunn (Zoo Vienna)
8. ZooParc de Beauval
9. Bioparc Valencia
10. Folly Farm

Interesting choices... but I know nobody really "picks" as they are algorithm-calculated.

Aquariums:
Best Aquariums - the World - TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards

1. Lisbon Oceanarium
2. Ripley's Aquarium of Canada
3. Georgia Aquarium
4. Oceanographic Valencia
5. Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies
6. Monterey Bay Aquarium
7. Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo
8. Acquario di Genova
9. Tennessee Aquarium
10. Vancouver Aquarium
 
Well, no, not really "Enough said!". How did a small Welsh zoo sneak into a list otherwise composed solely of big hitters? Is the ranking geographical, reflecting the top rated attraction in a particular area, or is Folly Farm doing something which others should emulate?

Actually, I do think there's value in lists like this. The "wisdom of the crowds" states that individual contributors don't need to have visited many zoos for their aggregated ratings to be informative. Depending on how they were compiled, Tripadvisor's rankings could represent public opinion far more accurately than the considered assessment of someone who's visited every zoo personally.
 
Giant Panda said:
Well, no, not really "Enough said!". How did a small Welsh zoo sneak into a list otherwise composed solely of big hitters? .
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Purely down to social media comments & easy to give 'likes'! These lists are pointless for ranking zoos, I stand by my comment! I can't believe Folly Farm would make most people's top 20 in the UK, let alone top 10 in the world!
 
Giant Panda said:
Well, no, not really "Enough said!". How did a small Welsh zoo sneak into a list otherwise composed solely of big hitters? Is the ranking geographical, reflecting the top rated attraction in a particular area, or is Folly Farm doing something which others should emulate?

Actually, I do think there's value in lists like this. The "wisdom of the crowds" states that individual contributors don't need to have visited many zoos for their aggregated ratings to be informative. Depending on how they were compiled, Tripadvisor's rankings could represent public opinion far more accurately than the considered assessment of someone who's visited every zoo personally.
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one would assume that the table is based on the ratings that reviewers give to (in this case) the zoos. For example, Folly Farm currently has 3935 reviews on Tripadvisor, of which 3275 are excellent (five stars), which is 83% apparently. That's pretty extraordinary and it is no wonder they make it into the top ten list.

But Loro Parque has a five-star rating of only 73% (curiously, it says there are 20,926 reviews, with 6519 reviews at five stars, so there is a typo on that page somewhere!).

I tried to google to find out exactly how the "top ten" are decided and came up with nothing. Even on Tripadvisor's forum, where one person specifically asked how it is done, he got the reply:
"I can't give you a lot of specifics regarding how our Top 10 lists are chosen because, like our Popularity Index, it involves a proprietary algorithm. The process is a combination of the ratings and opinions submitted by TripAdvisor travelers and editorial contributions by the TripAdvisor team"

In other words, a non-answer.
 
Chlidonias said:
one would assume that the table is based on the ratings that reviewers give to (in this case) the zoos. For example, Folly Farm currently has 3935 reviews on Tripadvisor, of which 3275 are excellent (five stars), which is 83% apparently. That's pretty extraordinary and it is no wonder they make it into the top ten list.

But Loro Parque has a five-star rating of only 73% (curiously, it says there are 20,926 reviews, with 6519 reviews at five stars, so there is a typo on that page somewhere!).

I tried to google to find out exactly how the "top ten" are decided and came up with nothing. Even on Tripadvisor's forum, where one person specifically asked how it is done, he got the reply:
"I can't give you a lot of specifics regarding how our Top 10 lists are chosen because, like our Popularity Index, it involves a proprietary algorithm. The process is a combination of the ratings and opinions submitted by TripAdvisor travelers and editorial contributions by the TripAdvisor team"

In other words, a non-answer.
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Thanks for this, it just confirms my opinion really, the list can't seriously be justified which makes it pretty pointless & useless!
 
If we took number of photos posted on this site as a judge of how good a zoo is,Sewerby zoo must be one of the best zoos in the uk, which anyone on this site bar one knows it isn't!!
 
pipaluk said:
Thanks for this, it just confirms my opinion really, the list can't seriously be justified which makes it pretty pointless & useless!
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Again: well, no. The list has nothing to do with "social media comments & easy to give 'likes'", so in fact you were completely wrong. Once again, however, you do prove to be a master of postdiction.

I don't think any ZooChatter would rate Folly Farm among the best in the world, but that's why its inclusion (among nine likely contenders) is interesting. The Tripadvisor score suggests it is indeed doing something (or many things) right.
 
Giant Panda said:
Again: well, no. The list has nothing to do with "social media comments & easy to give 'likes", so in fact you were completely wrong. Once again, however, you do prove to be a master of postdiction.

I don't think any ZooChatter would rate Folly Farm among the best in the world, but that's why its inclusion (among nine reasonable contenders) is interesting. The Tripadvisor score suggests it is indeed doing something right.
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I'd suggest it's just rigged, but won't get into a pointless debate!
 
if one compares the Chester Zoo and Folly Farm pages directly (irrespective of the Top Ten list), it is interesting that Chester has a lower percentage of five-star reviews and a higher percentage of one- and two-star reviews than Folly Farm does.

I think a lot of zoo visitors actually would place Folly Farm in the top UK zoos. I mean, you're talking about many thousands of reviews here which take some effort to write - they aren't just "likes". And it is well-known that people are more inclined to write about a bad experience than a good one, so having mainly good reviews and almost no bad reviews (as is the case for both Chester and Folly Farm) is really saying something.
 
Chlidonias said:
if one compares the Chester Zoo and Folly Farm pages directly (irrespective of the Top Ten list), it is interesting that Chester has a lower percentage of five-star reviews and a higher percentage of one- and two-star reviews than Folly Farm does.

I think a lot of zoo visitors actually would place Folly Farm in the top UK zoos. I mean, you're talking about many thousands of reviews here which take some effort to write - they aren't just "likes". And it is well-known that people are more inclined to write about a bad experience than a good one, so having mainly good reviews and almost no bad reviews (as is the case for both Chester and Folly Farm) is really saying something.
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I'm afraid no-one can ever know for sure who has written these reports or whether they've actually been there! In theory, it's possible the same person posted the lot!!
 
pipaluk said:
I'm afraid no-one can ever know for sure who has written these reports or whether they've actually been there! In theory, it's possible the same person posted the lot!!
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that's really grasping at straws. Certainly good reviews can be written to bump up the appearance of a zoo (or anything else) being good. But if you have well over 3000 five-star reviews and only 25 one-star reviews, that suggests your argument doesn't hold water.

Here are the current numbers for their reviews:
3275 five-star (excellent)
509 four-star (very good)
89 three-star (average)
30 two-star (poor)
25 one-star (terrible)

You can suggest that the all the good reviews are fake, but that isn't how the results would look if that were the case. By your reasoning that would mean that there were almost no genuine reviewers for that zoo because there are so few bad reviews on there.
 
Chlidonias said:
that's really grasping at straws. Certainly good reviews can be written to bump up the appearance of a zoo (or anything else) being good. But if you have well over 3000 five-star reviews and only 25 one-star reviews, that suggests your argument doesn't hold water.

Here are the current numbers for their reviews:
3275 five-star (excellent)
509 four-star (very good)
89 three-star (average)
30 two-star (poor)
25 one-star (terrible)

You can suggest that the all the good reviews are fake, but that isn't how the results would look if that were the case. By your reasoning that would mean that there were almost no genuine reviewers for that zoo because there are so few bad reviews on there.
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Ok, you and Giant Panda believe the reviews are worthwhile and Folly Farm is the 9th best zoo in THE WORLD! Fair enough, I don't, I stand by my comment that the list means nothing! No-one else seems interested
 
pipaluk said:
Ok, you and Giant Panda believe the reviews are worthwhile and Folly Farm is the 9th best zoo in THE WORLD! Fair enough, I don't, I stand by my comment that the list means nothing! No-one else seems interested
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no, neither Giant Panda nor myself do think that Folly Farm is the tenth best zoo in the world - he specifically said that already!

What we are talking about is why it would be on the list in the first place, and that it obviously is very highly-ranked by typical zoo visitors.
 
pipaluk said:
Ok, you and Giant Panda believe the reviews are worthwhile and Folly Farm is the 9th best zoo in THE WORLD! Fair enough, I don't, I stand by my comment that the list means nothing! No-one else seems interested
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Always a pleasure pipaluk.
 
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