When TripAdvisor introduces something new, inns and hotels watch closely. Why? With over 260 million visitors a month, 3.1 million business listings* and millions of reviews on tripadvisor.com, TripAdvisor is clearly a major player in the hospitality industry. With TripConnectTM, TripAdvisor is looking to capitalize on its brand and technologies to drive more business to your booking engine.
TripConnect and How it Affects your Business
One of the keys to Tripadvisor.com has always been to organize and list businesses by rank, based on the number and quality of guest reviews. If you were the highest ranked inn you enjoyed the top of the page. But things are changing. Once guests enter a check-in and check-out date, inns are listed in order but also based on whether they show availability.
Let’s take a look at Santa Fe, New Mexico on TripAdvisor. At the start all the inns are listed in order. Click on “Show Prices” and enter a check-in and check-out dates. At least at the time of writing this article the list doesn’t go #1, #2, #3, etc. It skips over #1 and #3 which are lower on the page way at the bottom; well below inns that have rates via Expedia, Booking.com, TripConnect, etc. Why? Notice that they only have links that say “Contact accommodation for availability”. These inns are not sharing their availability with TripAdvisor.
What does this mean? Just like before inns are ranked by order, but now if you don’t share your availability with TripAdvisor, you may not be in the normal numbered order once a guest starts checking availability. With gathering and displaying availability and rates, the core of TripAdvisor is changing.
These are big changes and understanding them is important to your hospitality business.
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