In a move clearly heading towards the dual buzz words of personalization and customization, travel website TripAdvisor is 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.
“We’re going social and getting personal,” TripAdvisor CEO and co-founder Stephen Kaufer said during Monday morning’s beta announcement in New York City.
The idea behind the new iteration – both desktop and mobile-friendly which still keeps the company’s signature reviews – was to marry those reviews with a more photo and video-driven dynamic user experience that allows for a far greater degree of personalization than has existed since the site’s initial 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.”
When TripAdvisor first partnered with Facebook in 2010, integrating maps of places friends had visited, it was not at the time primarily a booking site. Now, the beta version of the new TripAdvisor indicates a Frankenstein hodgepodge of successful social: incorporating elements of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and even Twitter.
So far, over 500 launch partners have participated in the company’s beta-test, including brands like CNN Travel, Pop Sugar, Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic, as well as a host of social media influencers including Food Network’s Giada De Laurentiis and travel bloggers Travel Babbo and The Points Guy.
Of course, a looming question lingers: Will TripAdvisor be able to convince individuals to invest time and energy in yet another social media platform?
“The main reason every other challenger to leading social oriented platforms have failed is scale – when you are starting from zero, building a community takes a long time. TripAdvisor is better positioned,” said a spokeswoman for the company. “We have what no one else has – an existing, global travel community of nearly half a billion unique visitors a month. Our app is already one of the most popular and downloaded travel apps.”
And how does the new TripAdvisor impact hotels? When asked whether there would be SEO optimization options for brands and properties (ditto ad opportunities that could potentially boost position in a user’s feed), a spokeswoman said for now, the content is all organically-driven.
“As we’re currently in beta, our focus right now is on the traveler and content-creator experience. We will have additional details to share regarding owners/operators at launch,” she said.