TripAdvisor is the biggest travel reviews website in the world. It makes nearly $1 billion in revenue a year and boasts more than 60 million members. (Barrie, 2015) The website now has reviews of hotels, restaurants and attractions across the globe, with contributors (all unpaid) add 115 comments to the site every minute. There are more than 890,000 hotels listed and TripAdvisor is the largest collections of user contributed travels photographs in the worlds. (Vanderbilt, 2014) Customers are now more likely to cross-shop and price check than ever before, the word of mouth, the online reviews, incentives and transparent benefits of the service will often be the major deciding factor for a customer.

TripAdvisor invests largely in the Search Optimization and marketing, a simple search on Google “stay in Rio de Janeiro” clearly has TripAdvisor featured as one of the top most page from SEO perspective. Ads by TripAdvisor also feature at the top of Google search results, demonstrating their SEM implementation.

Tom Vanderbil, is a successfully American journalist and blogger and has a long experience in travelling and influence. He states that there is even a “TripAdvisor effect”, the site is now so big that its reviews can shift the tourist economies of entire countries (Vanderbilt, 2014). In fact, Daily Mail conducted a separate study of TripAdvisor and saw that user-generated content was “directly related to £2 billion of tourism spending in the UK,” (Kitching, 2016) In 2012, that figure made up around 2.2% of all tourist spending. (Barrie, 2015) Reviews written by previous visitors to places in the UK have influenced 8.7 million trips by tourist. (Kitching, 2016)

As TripAdvisor travellers spend more in destinations, they have even more reasons to leave reviews on TripAdvisor. This provides business owners with actionable ways to improve, build better relationships with their visitors, promote, increase repeat customer visits, price competitively, gain exposure and inspire to leave positive reviews. Vanderbilt also notes an internal TripAdvisor study that found that hotel owners who reply to commenters are 20% more likely to get bookings. Another piece of analysis, this time from Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research, found that reviews even affect hotels’ revenue per available room. (Barrie, 2015) Every positive percentage point a place rises up the tables in TripAdvisor, revenue per room at locations increases by 1.4%. Vanderbilt explains that as a result, hotels can raise prices by 11% to reflect their reputation on the site.

According to a Forrested survey of over 2100 travellers commissioned by TripsAdvisor 81% of travellers suffest reviews are important, while 3% suffest they were not. However, almost half of the respondents said they wouldn’t book or look at a hotel unless it had reviews. Therefore, influence and feedback from costumers is essential for hotels survival and reputation. Travellers influenced by TripAdvisor don’t just take more trips – they take better trips. Using TripAdviosr helps travellers get great value for their money and the confidence that comes from getting great value encourages them to take longer trips and spend more in their destination TripAdvisor influences and generates increased travel spend, more trips and longer stays, while also sustaining a significant amount of tourism employment.

The Internet now influences the way people live and it has changed practically everything.. In reality, hotels with good rankings and reviews can enjoy higher, booking, higher average daily rate and revenue. (Lyle, 2015) With the emergence of social media and review websites, TripAdvisor has emerged as the leader in hotel industries. Hotels ranked 1^st on TripAdvisor earn a staggering 56% more direct booking each month compared to hotels ranked 40h in their respective town or city. As a result, it’s vital to pay attention to TripAdvisor and we can come to a conclusion that it is the biggest source of online influence to costumers when deciding where to travel and book a place to stay. To conclude, we can say that TripAdvisor is dominating their digital marketing in their sector, they transformed the industry and subsequently raised considerable challenges for hotels and restaurants. The site is a fantastic representation of the opportunities that digital marketing can create and TripAdvisor has clearly led the way in providing a platform for the electronic word of mouth.

References

Chris Kitching (2016) “The TripAdvisor effect” Daily Mail [Online] Available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3541427/TripAdvisor-reviews-generate-2bn-visitor-spending-UK-study-claims.html#ixzz4RywhM8kz [Accessed 20 February 2017]

Joshua Barrie (2015) “TripAdvisor reviews are now so powerful they impact the tourist industry of entire countries” Business Insider [Online] Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/tripadvisor-affects-tourism-of-entire-countries-2015-3 [Accessed 20 February 2017]

 Thomas Lyle (2015) “Why Do TripAdvisor Reviews Matter for Hoteliers?” Front Desk Anywhere [Blog Online] Available at: http://blog.frontdeskanywhere.com/why-do-tripadvisor-reviews-matter [Accessed 20 February 2017]

Tom Vanderbilt (2015) “Inside the Mad, Mad World of TripAdvisor” Outside Online [Online] Available at: http://www.outsideonline.com/1960011/inside-mad-mad-world-tripadvisor [Accessed 20 February 2017]