TripAdvisor boosts restaurant booking strategy, buys BestTables in Portugal. More moves from TripAdvisor in the restaurant sector with confirmation that it has bought Portuguese booking site BestTables.
Terms of the deal are not disclosed. The startup was created by local entrepreneurs Ricardo Sécio and Sergio Sequeira in 2011 in Lisbon and has since grown to a network of over 1,200 bookable restaurants across both Portuguese and Brazilian markets. BestTables allows diners to choose and book a restaurant based on preferred location, availability, price, type of cuisine and special offers. TripAdvisor ramps up attractions strategy, shows why it splashed out $200 million on Viator.
TripAdvisor is embarking on a major strategy to woo providers of tours and activities to the platform, with promises of direct sales to consumers.
Existing operators that are members of TripAdvisor For Business programme have been invited to join the Viator Marketplace in order to “turn your TripAdvisor views into paying customers”. The reality is that the “direct sales” element of the pitch is actually making sure operators sign up to Viator – the intermediary bought for $200 million last summer – and feature their products there. Still, any existing TripAdvisor listing for an attraction that signs up for the programme will now find themselves with a “Book Now” button on the site, leading to a redirect to the relevant Viator landing page. Oyster is the latest to sell up as TripAdvisor continues acquisition spree. TripAdvisor's TripConnect lets hotels bid for traffic and bypass Google ads.
Last July, Tnooz was the first to report that TripAdvisor, the user-reviews giant, planned to let independent hotels and B&Bs participate in its metasearch pricing display.
Today, TripAdvisor launched the international service, dubbed TripConnect. Hoteliers pay for every click they receive, and can cap daily spend. Change to the online travel eco-system. TripAdvisor Q3 Profit Drops on Marketing, Technology Costs. TripAdvisor Inc. said Wednesday that third-quarter profit fell 6 percent as surging marketing and technology costs outweighed higher revenue at the travel-reviews site.
The company, which took a TV-advertising campaign nationwide and began testing it in some international markets, said that average unique visitors to its websites rose nearly 60 percent to 260 million per month. The shares rose in after-hours trading. TRIP data by YCharts Net income was $55.9 million, or 38 cents per share, compared with $59.4 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. The company said that excluding the cost of stock-based compensation and other items it would have earned 45 cents per share, matching Wall Street expectations. Revenue rose 20 percent to $255.1 million, slightly below analysts’ forecast of $255.7 million, according to FactSet.
About three-fourths of revenue came from click-based advertising, which grew a modest 13 percent. Costs rose 42 percent, to $171.4 million. TripAdvisor says no plans to become an OTA, happy to remain booking facilitator. TripAdvisor has moved quickly to reassure quite possibly the entire hospitality sector and world of intermediaries that it has no intention of becoming an online travel agency.
CEO Stephen Kaufer made the clarification in a call with investors following its Q3 earnings when he confirmed the user review (and perhaps soon, metasearch) giant would allow users to make reservations for hotels on its mobile applications. Kaufer says the company is not becoming an OTA, remaining a fan of the media model and continuing to be happy to facilitate a reservation while partners fulfill the request. This is not surprising. A recent study by WIHP reveals TripAdvisor has overtaken OTAs and all other sources to become the number one source of traffic for bookings made on a hotel’s website. Here are key observations from the earnings call: TripAdvisor and American Express - a user review deal with a difference. As partnerships go, today’s tie-up between American Express and TripAdvisor is a curious one.
Effectively the partnership gives card members recognition for posting a review, flags up that the reviews are from an Amex Traveler and gives card holders access to trend information and special deals. According to the card company, the deal has a number of benefits for members as long as they’re happy to link their Amex cards with their TripAdvisor profiles. Those that do will have an ‘Amex Traveler’ badge applied to their profile and ‘Amex Card Member Review’ and card icon displayed next to user reviews they post after making a booking. Card members will also be able to access the latest buying trend information via the Amex Spend Graph on what hotels and restaurants other cardholders are booking and get special offers. Stacy Gratz, Amex vice president of digital partnerships says the deal adds ‘context and relevancy’ for Amex travellers, as well as other TripAdvisor users, when planning a trip.
Tripadvisor- hotel booking. TripAdvisor buys Jetsetter. Six months after officially being put up for sale and following the exit of its CEO earlier in 2012, Jetsetter has a new home: TripAdvisor.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed in the official announcement. TripAdvisor says the private sale service will form part of its Smarter Travel Media division, home to its other brands in the group such as BookingBuddy, fellow deal site SniqueAway and Tingo. The acquisition ends a year of uncertainty for Jetsetter after seeing the departure of its founder and CEO Drew Patterson in May 2012 amid reports of internal wrangling and poor morale amongst staff.
Gilt Groupe, which initially installed UK boss Rob Deeming to oversee operations after Patterson’s exit, finally put the company on the block late-last year. What TripAdvisor will soon have in common with airline companies. TripAdvisor is increasingly having something in common with airline companies that’s not a good thing: negative operating leverage.
Operating leverage is a yardstick for judging if a company is getting good value for its costs. TripAdvisor is expecting that its expenses will outstrip its revenue growth, which means its operating leverage will be negative. This is common in the airline industry, which has to outlay huge investments in new aircraft. In case you haven’t noticed, airlines rarely enjoy a sustained profit. The Financial Times is skeptical. TripAdvisor basks in social graph integration with Facebook, eye-watering numbers revealed.
TripAdvisor, wallowing in a 20% jump in revenue for 2012 compared to the previous year, also appears to be enjoying the fruits of its partnership with Facebook.
When the user review giant launched its Trip Friends service almost three years ago, long before the deluge of social travel sites arrived on the scene, some wondered whether the ability to mine a user’s social graph to get more information would really be a feature members wanted. But as the message from within the organisation changed from “wisdom of crowds” to “wisdom of friends”, it became clear that Trip Friends was going to become an integral part of TripAdvisor’s strategy. And now the numbers are starting to look pretty impressive. TripAdvisor tests hotel metasearch service - now the fun really begins. User review giant TripAdvisor is finally doing what pretty much everyone involved in the hotel sector expected it to do years ago – consumer metasearch for its vast portfolio of properties.
The company confirmed this week that it is currently testing “new search functionality” for hotels, covering both desktop and mobile versions of the service. Randomly selected users have been able to see the new platform in action over the course of the past two months, but there is no time-line as yet when it will be fully deployed and available to rest of the site’s massive user-base. Functionality mirrors many of the other hotel metasearch services around the web, with availability and prices for properties based on arrival and departure dates, and location. Meta search rules: SeatGuru relaunches with flight planning tools, revamped look. Following along from TripAdvisor’s hotel meta search launch, TripAdvisor subsidiary SeatGuru has relaunched their website with a revamped look and flight planning tools.
Beyond the design tweaks, the story here lies squarely in the meta. Meta search is becoming ever-more popular, with TripAdvisor’s flight search product now baked into the core of SeatGuru. Users can not only search for flights right there alongside the seat maps, but can also take advantage of SeatGuru’s new “G-Factor” functionality. G-Factor rates flights according to comfort, with three main categories: “love it,” “like it,” or “live with it.” Similar to Hipmunk‘s “agony” ranking, this feature allows specific-seat-seeking travelers the ability to gauge their comfort level alongside schedule, pricing and amenities. Introduces B2B Division and Continues Global Expansion. NEWTON, Mass., May 13 /PRNewswire/ -- TripAdvisor®, the world's most popular and largest travel community, today announced the launch of TripAdvisor for Business, a new dedicated division providing the tourism industry unparalleled access to more than 34 million monthly visitors* worldwide. The company has also announced its plans for continued expansion in Asia Pacific.
(Logo: ) "Our new business-to-business division and global expansion in Asia will support segments and geographical areas with the highest growth potential and enable us to further solidify our leading position in the travel industry," said Steve Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor to add direct business listings for hotels globally. Many hotels on TripAdvisor have long felt ripped off because reviews of their properties make TripAdvisor and its advertisers — often competitors of the hotel — big bucks, but there are no direct links or contact information for the property itself. TripAdvisor announced today that the policy will change on all its global websites beginning Jan. 4, 2010. At that time, hotels on TripAdvisor will have the option to pay a flat-fee annual subscription for TripAdvisor Business Listings and will be able to display their properties’ URL, telephone number and e-mail address.
Love it or hate it, TripAdvisor is damn big these days. It’s the travel brand everyone loves to hate. It angers hoteliers and sends the consumer press into a tizzy when something goes wrong. It can only be TripAdvisor .
Trust issues with tripadvisor. TripAdvisor partners with airlines to incentivize hotel reviews. TripAdvisor has partnered with airlines, including Lufthansa in Germany and Jet Airways in India, to hand out airline miles in exchange for hotel reviews. Members of Lufthansa’s Miles & More frequent flyer program can write, in German, up to nine reviews per month of hotels, restaurants or attractions and, if published on TripAdvisor.de, they’ll earn up to 900 award miles. Displaying reviews and opinions from friends of Facebook friends. TripAdvisor has expanded Facebook integration in order to let travellers view reviews from friends of Facebook friends. The company says the move makes planning more social for its community. The “Friend of a Friend” feature highlights trusted reviews and opinions from friends of Facebook friends.
Will Tingo further alienate TripAdvisor from the hospitality industry? On March 21, 2012, TripAdvisor subsidiary Smarter Travel Media launched Tingo.com, a new hotel-booking site. Travelmole. Www.tripadvisor.fr/PressCenter-i4649-c1-Press_Releases.html. TripAdvisor goes public and Kaufer says scale dominates phony reviews. Whether you love or hate TripAdvisor, which began trading today as a public company on Nasdaq, you can trace its origins, in a way, to a Mexico vacation and CEO Stephen Kaufer’s wife.
Kaufer, visiting Manhattan for the debut, recalled during a conference call how he had picked up some Mexico brochures in the late 1990s and did some additional Internet research about the hotel possibilities at the suggestion of his wife. Kaufer says he found some useful information about the upcoming Mexico trip on the Web from a source which was a precursor of a travel blog. Social media and SEO created a mutant in travel - Introducing Fake Review Optimization. Expedia readies TripAdvisor spinoff citing hotel review reliability.
TripAdvisor promises response to red badge complaint. TripAdvisor’s ongoing spats with the hotel industry took another turn this week with assurances from the review giant that it will respond to a complaint from Kwikchex. The reputation management specialist is acting on behalf of the Riverside Hotel, Evesham, which had a red badge applied to its listing more than a month ago. Avis d'hôtels, restaurants, activités, voyage, hébergements et séjours.