Monday 23 November 2009

Get your Direct Contacts on TripAdvisor in 2010

In January 2010, TripAdvisor is set to launch their Business Listing Classifieds for hotels and accommodation providers. The Business Listings will enable hotel to be listed on TripAdvisor with their direct contact information including a phone number, e-mail and a link to their website. This offers hotels a never-before-seen opportunity to reach out to potential guests directly via TripAdvisor, one of the most popular guest review rating sites in the marketplace.



For TripAdvisor of course this is a chance to monetise its website traffic and existing popularity and to be a first mover to offer hotels the possibility to target guests directly rather than forcing their guests through a third party to make the booking

So, what does this mean for hotels, resorts, and other accommodation service providers around the globe?

  • For a low annual fee starting from £180 (€200) your hotel can be listed on TripAdvisor – an affordable sum of money even for the smallest B&B.
  • This is an opportunity to get your contact details directly communicated to the TripAdvisor visitors with an opportunity to direct the visitor to your proprietary website instead of other third parties sites.
  • A listing on TripAdvisor could contribute to your online visibility and expose your hotel to millions of visitors and potential guests. (TripAdvisor (and its related sites) have over 25 million monthly unique visitors).
  • TripAdvisor is the most popular social network for travel comments which will help to build awareness of the products and services you have on offer.

With over 25 millions visitors a month TripAdvisor trumps all other travel social media sites. Moreover, research indicates that between 70% and 81% of consumers read online travel reviews before make their purchase decision. And more than 70% trust comments on social media sites such as TripAdvisor. Many of our hospitality clients have already expressed their willingness to pay for a business listing on TripAdvisor – and we believe that as this concept develops it could become one of the leading traffic and revenue drivers to a hotel’s website – even giving Google a run for their advertising money.

Whether it will be as revolutionary as it seems remains to be seen, but what we do know is that TripAdvisor has taken a clear step to enable hotels to communicate directly with their own contact details – making it an industry first.

As with all such opportunities, there may be several factors that will diminish the effectiveness of such a listing – at least over time. The first is what is the added value when all hotels’ in a market are listed on TripAdvisor with their direct contact details? Will the cost then increase to create a financial incentive for higher positing in the listing? Second, if a hotel has very low popularity ratings (on TripAdvisor), a poor website or a low capacity to handle incoming requests – would the vote tip against paying for such a listing? Lastly, and perhaps the most important question – how does a business listing fit into the overall online strategy and positioning of a given hotel? Without clear objectives and in tough times, spending £200 or more may not provide the best return on investment nor give the expected results.

Notwithstanding the above questions, we believe that this is an excellent opportunity. Especially perhaps for the small and medium hotels and resorts enabling these to circumvent the indirect sales’ channels traditionally promoted on such sites and attract guests direct – leaving the hotel with more customer ownership and the possibility to piggy-back on a strategically important site such as TripAdvisor.

For more information about Business Listing go to http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/BusinessListings. To learn more about our offering and to find out how to improve your online conversion, please contact us here!

1 comment:

Hospitality Business Coach and Mentor said...

This is the past the future lays in real-time opinion using new applications that will be developed for Google Wave. Don`t look to see what people said 3 years ago, ask them what they think today? Decide and go directly from a Wave to the site - Google search to a Wave to a booking QED and only a few months away.