I put a review onto the site last night and a, dismayed that it has not shown up on my page and apparently needs approval as it is a new destination. Would it not be better for the site to let the reviews on and then deal with any that cause problems instead of frustrating those that want to produce reviews ?

I will contact you by private message about that. Seems to be a technical problem, not a workflow issue.

We figured out what happened. No review disappeared.

Thingy transcribed her ciao review about The Gambia and posted a so called "regional description" on trivago. It is not possibly to "review" regions, countries, cities etc. on trivago. You can write about them, but it is a somewhat different matter. These regional descritpions are ment to be small travel guides and they incorporate text structuring (Headlines, Lists, paragraphs, font formatting), embedded images, and links to other relevant trivago content.

Have a look at my travel guide about Beirut - its in German, but you get the idea.

Regional descriptions are rewarded much better than reviews, because there is much more work involved. Credits for go up to 5000 shares! (instead of max 300 for reviews) and depend both on the touristic relevance of the city/region and how other users rate your efforts.

The reason why thingy could not see here text showing up, is that regional description have to be confirmed by another user before they go live.