Beautiful hotel website photos may be bogus

CLEVELAND - Did you ever stay at a hotel that had great photos on its website, but when you got there the place was a dump? That's the complaint of many travelers these days.

But now there are some new ways to find what the place really looks like.

Hotels love the Internet, where they can post swanky photos that make a dump look like the Ritz.

But the website Oyster.com is now exposing some of that trickery, posting real user photos of the same scene.

Consumer reporter John Matarese gave several examples:

• A beautiful pool and model at a Caribbean Resort was, in reality, jammed with jiggly young partygoers.
• A pristine resort beach -- Oyster.com revealed the same beach packed with hundreds of people.
• A cool rooftop pool in LA was really in the shadow of a giant Macy's store.

John Matarese said his favorite pre-vacation website is TripAdvisor.com . He said he can read real traveler reviews and see photos that weren't staged with models when the pool was closed.

Bottom line: Read as many traveler reviews as possible of any hotel or resort you plan to visit. Don't just go by the hotels photos.