SALES & MARKETING
TripAdvisor goes social
The GM at India ' s Umaid Bhawan Palace Jodhpur says she ' s excited at the prospect of TripAdvisor transitioning to a social media channel .
THE TRAVEL WEBSITE WILL TRANSITION INTO A SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM . WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR HOTELS ?
By CHLOE RILEY , ASSOCIATE EDITOR
In September , travel review giant TripAdvisor announced that it would be rebranding itself by year ’ s end into a social platform that builds upon its almost 20-year success capitalizing on peer reviews of hotels , geographical areas and experiences .
The idea behind the new iteration — both desktop and mobile-friendly , which retains the company ’ s signature reviews — was to marry those reviews with a more dynamic photo- and video-driven user experience that allows for a far greater degree of personalization than the site has had since its debut in 2000 . Users will have the option to follow friends and family in addition to brands and influencers in the travel and foodie industries .
“ Our research shows that a high intent travel audience is looking for review content , photos , videos and other relevant content to make their decisions on where to go and what to eat or do ... and no one has more content than TripAdvisor ,” a spokeswoman for the company told HOTELS . “ We are in a unique position for success because of our content , our existing user behavior and believe our community will more naturally evolve to embrace this new experience than other sites that try to build communities of users .”
48 hotelsmag . com December 2018