Comments for TripAdvisor: The Web's Strongest Travel Community

TripAdvisor: The Web's Strongest Travel Community

2007-04-25T20:23:35Z

We have been discussing the online travel industry and have covered Yahoo! Travel from a Web 3.0 perspective already. Here we take a look at the offering from online travel community behemoth TripAdvisor.

TripAdvisor was founded in February 2000 and is among the world‚Äôs largest online travel communities with over 20 million unique monthly visitors and approximately 5 million registered members. TripAdvisor is currently part of Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE). The site is a winner of PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites and Forbes' Best of the Web.

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Context

TripAdvisor provides recommendations for hotels, resorts, inns, vacation packages, and travel guides. The site is broken up into distinct categories like Find Hotels, Flights, Read & Write Reviews, Browse Destinations, Rants & Raves, GoLists, TripAdvisor Forums, Helpful Links, Top Business Hotels, TripAdvisor Inside, and Photo and Video Sharing, but the organization could be better. The users have the freedom of moving quickly from one category to another, but the organization doesn't necessarily create an integrated contextual experience. TripAdvisor doesn't flow with the natural rhythm of the travel planning experience.

In fact, the key problem with TripAdvisor is its organization. I tried to look at the photos of Giraffe Manor B&B in Nairobi, but after scrolling through numerous pages, I couldn't find them, even though the reviewer claims to have posted them.

Content

TripAdvisor has a wide range of content. The site contains information on over 180,000 hotels and 91,000 restaurants in 23,000 cities. Users can also browse travel destinations across the world with the aid of a travel map and as the searches narrow down, the user is provided with a local map showing local attractions and the best deals for local hotels.

TripAdvisor is wiki-enabled, which facilitates millions of travelers to view, contribute, and edit the guides available on more than 24,000 destinations worldwide. The site also has photos and videos. The site has tie-ins with over 17 business partners in the travel industry including Expedia, Sabre, Orbitz and American Airlines.

Community

TripAdvisor has the largest travel community on the web, which is visited by more than 500,000 travelers every day. The TripAdvisor Forum allows users to post their experiences about tours, express opinions, recommend hotels, resorts, inns, vacations, travel packages, vacation packages, post questions and answer or advise other members of the forum. Users can also post photos and videos of their tours. TripAdvisor allows users to create a travel blog on TravelPod.

TripAdvisor is by far the most successful in engaging a global community of travelers in sharing their experiences and reviews on the site. The Rant & Rave function can make or break the reputation of a hotel or a restaurant in a nanosecond, and is tremendously helpful to travelers!

Commerce

TripAdvisor has tie-ins with a number of commerce sites such as its parent Expedia, Hotels.com, British Airways, Delta, Priceline and Lastminute.com, all of which aid its users in booking flights, hotels, vacations or cruises, enabling the site to earn commission revenue. This, however, is a commodity function, available on all travel sites.

The TripAdvisor Store retails various TripAdvisor Gear through a partnership with Cafepress. Items sold by TripAdvisor include hats, mugs, clothing, bags etc. The site has identified a way of monetizing its brand, but so far, this looks like a fairly shabby effort, since to be blunt, the merchandising, by and large, sucks. They should look at how National Geographic does its merchandising, by creating unique products sourced from various parts of the world - jackets from Nepal, wool slippers from Tibet, caps from Peru - rather than this bland catalog of insignia products.

Personalization

TripAdvisor offers some good personalization and travel planning options. Each personalized page contains full information about the user, stating the person‚Äôs recent travels or booking, contributions to TripAdvisor, reviews and also includes user preferences for travel (pleasure or business), spending habits, and vacation choices. The personalization facility allows users to organize and plan one‚Äôs trip, save hotels, attractions, compare hotels, make a list of places one would like to visit, add maps and notes, organize items by destination or days, and create a personal travel guidebook to save, print or email.

The site also informs the registered users with a time-sensitive e-mail newsletter for travelers planning a vacation, giving customized e-mail alerts on specific hotels, attractions and cities of their choice. The site also has other personalized newsletters like TripWatch and Weekend Getaway Guide provided through email.

Vertical Search

TripAdvisor offers user-friendly search options for hotels and flights enabling users to select from multiple options according to their preferences, but there is nothing special or overly different about it.

I would like to plan a trip centered around B&Bs in Andalucia (Southern Spain). How do I do that? The vertical search option simply doesn't get sophisticated enough quite yet.

Business Model

TripAdvisor has an Alexa traffic rank of 504 and has more than 20 million unique monthly visitors. The site has display advertising as well as cost-per-click advertising. Travel Ad Network is TripAdvisor‚Äôs exclusive advertising representative for display advertising. Advertising and Commissions on bookings constitute their primary revenue streams.

Conclusion

My final Web 3.0 Rating is: Context: A-; Content: A-; Community: A+; Commerce: B-; Personalization: B+; Vertical Search: B-; Overall : A-

Comment from Dan on 2007-04-25

2007-04-25T21:05:52Z

Why is R/RW reviewing old travel sites? Boring.

Comment from Stephen on 2007-04-25

2007-04-25T21:48:30Z

I have used TripAdvisor to find places to stay and places to go. I find it to be the best site to find places to go and valuable information from other people. I used to to plan our honeymoon, to find a hotel up on Mackinaw Island last summer, and to goto Italy this year.

Comment from Bruce on 2007-04-25

2007-04-25T22:08:41Z

Whatever happened to the notion of just buying an airline ticket somewhere, anywhere! Going there unplanned (yes, unplanned), no guidebooks. Find a bar in the hub of the action, buy a beer, get speaking with some locals and just figuring it all out on your own. Don't even pre-book a hotel, just turn up and try and find one on your own steam. If you can't then just find a quiet spot in the park, or a cosy corner in the train terminal (never fails).

We used to do this back in the old days - just turn up somewhere and figure it all out. It's even easier these days 'cos air travel and hotels are much cheaper, and the options much wider.

Everyone seems to be seduced by the numbers relating to Trip Advisor but the site is a shocker - so uninspiring, so uncool and so unsexy.

OK so 20 million visit it but only a fraction of that probably use it (I dunno)

Your assertion in relation to commission revenue *This, however, is a commodity function, available on all travel sites* is untrue.

Our own site, a travel site, says NO to Adsense, NO to affiliate marketing, NO to commission, NO to paid features/posts. Not to say we have no business model, we do, but not in those ways.

There's EU legislation planned for next year which will outlaw bogus reviews on sites such as Trip Advisor and Amazon etc. So it should be interesting to see how that develops.

Comment from Sramana Mitra on 2007-04-25

2007-04-25T22:44:40Z

Dan,

Unfortunately, it's only the "Old" sites that have evolved far enough to have included all aspects of the Web 3.0 definition we're using. The new sites offer fragmented user experience, and don't have enough funding behind them to be able to realize all the functionality.

If you have a "new" site that you think DOES have all the aspects addressed, please point me to it, and I will be happy to review it for RWW.

Thanks, Sramana

Comment from paul macmanus on 2007-04-26

2007-04-26T08:32:18Z

finally something on my brothers website that I use.
I have no idea what a wiki is, or what RSS does, and most of the stuff on this website is pretty much greek to me.

But I do like to travel and tripadvisor is the best site I've found for reviews. I'm not a member and only use it to check out Hotel's after I've worked out a shortlist
but for that it works great to avoid hotels with good brochures and websites but have obvious issues with customer service.

A simple test of the website is typing a hotel name and review into Google. Trip Advisor comes up first generally

Comment from Nivedita on 2007-04-26

2007-04-26T09:28:30Z

Quite a cover for TA, but honestly statement of fact and rather unbiased, which is refreshing.
I've been watching the scene here in India and came across a really neat space for Travel enthusiasts that has genuine UG Content and super networking functionalities and features. I don't know if its web 3.0 but it really is interactive and fairly intuitive. I use it and latey have been recommending it to friends check it our www.OktataByebye.com. Will look to your opinions.

Comment from Graeme Thickins on 2007-04-26

2007-04-26T15:51:30Z

Nice post, Sramana. Last fall, I attended and blogged a lot about the biggest annual travel industry conference. It was called "Travel 2.0 Confronts the Establishment." Here's my coverage. There's a LOT happening in this space, which is very much early-adopting. Plus, it's a huge, global, growing industry -- and the portion being purchased online keeps going up, now more than 50%. Two community-oriented travel sites in particular that I was impressed with were RealTravel and Viator...plus one budding third-generation airfare search site, still in alpha, called Flyspy.

Comment from engtech on 2007-04-26

2007-04-26T17:37:56Z

I have to say I really like TripAdvisor user submitted pictures when checking out a resort. It's *very* nice to see the difference between the brochure and what it really looks like.

Comment from Sramana Mitra on 2007-04-26

2007-04-26T19:37:59Z

Dear ALL:

I am collecting your various references to sites that you have liked. I am going to investigate the bigger sites first, and then decide on which of the smaller / newer ones show promise and comprehensiveness, or are doing something so innovative that they warrant coverage.

Stay tuned.

Cheers!
Sramana

Comment from Jonas on 2007-04-26

2007-04-26T23:49:42Z

Then check out www.FareCompare.com it is the best flight search I have found (and I have looked).

You'll never search expedia / orbitz directly again!

Comment from erin on 2007-04-27

2007-04-27T15:55:10Z

The thing about TripAdvisor is that it's addictive. I'm planning a trip to London/Paris/Amsterdam in the fall, and the reviews of hotels in those countries, plus the message boards, have been a lifesaver during my planning. Plus, it's interesting to read the juxtaposition of how a hotel promotes itself and guests' experiences.

Comment from peili cui on 2007-04-27

2007-04-27T18:12:16Z

www.roamoo.com is a new web2.0 site about travel locations with photos, videos, comments and reviews, social networking and so much more great, unique features. It really worth checking it out.

Comment from Karin Schmollgruber on 2007-04-28

2007-04-29T06:44:54Z

I have interviewed one of Tripadvisors managers. You find my interview with Ian Rumgay on my travel industry blog Fastenyourseatbelts.at.

Comment from Tony on 2007-04-30

2007-04-30T08:40:29Z

The is one huge problem with TripAdvisor - it is a corporate website. You can't contact members, you can't leave URLs in their forums, you really can't share honest opinions - only sanitized, corporate approved opinions. Everything they do is paid for and attached to commerce. Yes, you can leave reviews, but once you register, you are bombarded by spam like emails and tons of other related garbage. And tons of their reviews are bogus, no matter what they are telling you. Sorry - but I just hate feeding the corporate monster!

Comment from Paula on 2007-05-01

2007-05-01T13:02:21Z

I have to disagree. I am a tripadvisor fan. I have been using tripadvisor and posting reviews for over 2 years, no obvious spam and have contacted several other members via email after they have assisted me in the forums.
The community is active and passionate and have had speedy, generous assistance on occasions when I needed last minute advice re business travel to new cities. You can exchange email addresses at any time via private messaging.
Not posting URLs has never been a problem either.. just name the business and they can almost always be found in google.

Comment from Michael J. Pratt on 2007-05-01

2007-05-01T19:51:02Z

I agree with Tony. I used to use TA quite a bit. The concept is a great one. The info on hotels, etc is also good. They completely fall down on the review part. It is clearly abused by who knows. Many of the reviews are so off base, either pos or neg that it calls their entire into question. As an avid traveler, I checked out some reviews of my favorite spots only to find stuff completely made up, presumably by a competitor to the spot, who knows. As hard as it is, the integrity of the reviews has to be made. I admit I don't know the answer but my advice to all is be leary of what you read in the reviews.