When Steve Kaufer was last in Singapore this time last year, he spoke to us about his vision for TripAdvisor to offer “the complete package to enable our 400 million users to experience much better vacations”.
“In five years’ time, with the TripAdvisor app, you will book and search in ways you haven’t done before, we will make recommendations as you are walking down the street. We will help you get there – get you the best deals – and help you have the best possible vacation.”
Well, it looks like we didn’t have to wait five years.
Steve Kaufer: “TripAdvisor is poised to disrupt the travel industry once again as we create a more personalised and connected community.”
In a live stream tonight, the co-founder and CEO of the world’s largest travel review site 18 years ago unveiled the new TripAdvisor – a fresh site and mobile experience – with ambitions to become “the most personalised and connected travel community” by going social and personal.
Currently in beta, and to be launched later this year across the 49 markets and 28 languages it operates in, it marries its body of 661 million reviews with content from brands, social media influencers, publishers and friends.
Travellers will also be able to create “Trips”, which can be indepth travel guides, itineraries or simple wish lists. Trips can be made private and saved for personal use or shared with the community to inspire and help others.
A “travel feed” will then allow users to personalise the feed according to the destinations they pick and travellers will be able to discover more relevant information faster when planning. And when on the go, the “travel feed” will surface recommendations and “make inspiration actionable” with travellers able to book on-the-go hotels, restaurants and activities, two areas that TripAdvisor has made big investments in.
When a member logs onto the TripAdvisor app or site, their homepage becomes a personalised feed of information. When searching a particular destination, the feed narrows the scope of the information displayed to that particular geographic location. For example, members planning a trip to Paris may see a food critic’s article on the best restaurant in the city, an influencer’s travel guide of “must-do’s,” and a friend’s review of a new hotel near the Eiffel Tower.
It’s a bit like a Facebook for travel, but with booking functionality.
Opening the event with a personal story of his last trip to Asia with his son, Kaufer spoke of how archaic the process was when he wanted to get tips from friends and experts on what to do in Kyoto and thought, there has to be a better way to do this.
“There are so many sources, how could a site become the hub for travel planning? And yet I didn’t want a travel planning site to work for everyone but for me. I want to travel according to my own preferences,” he said.
Asking the question on whether TripAdvisor had all the ingredients to make this happen, it conducted research and found that when it came to the most important content during trip planning, 66% trusted other travellers’ reviews and 62% trusted friends and family. It also found 36% wanted video, 47% articles and 45% photos.
Hence it went about bringing on partners and looked at how it could increase its video content. While in beta, more than 500 social media influencers, well-known consumer brands, publishers such as National Geographic and travel partners have joined the new TripAdvisor.
In beta, the new TripAdvisor will be rolled out later in the year in the 49 markets and 28 languages it operates in.
In addition, TripAdvisor’s team of destination experts and TripAdvisor Media Group brands, including Smarter Travel, Cruise Critic and TheFork.com, will contribute to the site through unique profiles.
Kaufer calls this the second disruption TripAdvisor is bringing to travel. Eighteen years ago, he said it revolutionised the industry with its reviews and unleashed the wisdom of the crowd. Now, he wants to connect the crowd – and beyond – in a social, personal way.
“TripAdvisor is poised to disrupt the travel industry once again as we create a more personalised and connected community.
“The new TripAdvisor is the one travel site that brings together social-assistive tools, amazing content and our existing booking capabilities to merge the joy of planning and discovery together into a single experience. We are assisting our members at each step of their journey as we become a more personalised, inspirational and useful TripAdvisor.”
As a traveller, I can see the value of such a site. I can see how useful it would be if I were to share my “Trips” to Penang for example with my friends so that I don’t have to copy and paste my itineraries everytime someone requests for it. This could become my travel journal and planner. It’d also be useful to have in one app recommendations around a specific destination I wanted to visit or am currently in, so that I didn’t have to go to multiple sites to find what I need.
The key is of course how relevant the personalisation and recommendations will be for me because, even now, I find TripAdvisor’s recommendations more skewed towards a Western audience rather than “travellers like me”, and I find local blogs and lists, and Google, more relevant when I am in-destination.
Jeff Chow, VP Product & Consumer Experience: The key will be the tech behind the personalisation and how truly relevant it can make the “travel feed”
By bringing in content from various sources other than just its user-generated reviews, it does broaden the scope of content and data points, and if its tech works – which Jeff Chow, VP of Product & Consumer Experience, says he and his team have been working deeply on for a while – it should therefore have a broader net from which to drill down to more personalized recommendations.
The question of course is always local relevance vs global scale for elephants such as TripAdvisor and a lot will depend on how successful and effective its personalisation is.
But this is a good step in the new journey towards Kaufer’s vision for TripAdvisor to help people have better vacations. Its move from reviews to a meta-search model did not go as well as expected and Kaufer had to take it on the chin from the financial community. In the interview from a year ago, he acknowledged that change “is easy if you are selling tennis shoes but in travel, you have to switch behaviour”.
Now he is betting that this is the next big thing in travel – connecting travellers in a social and personal way within an app.
See video below for a demo of the new TripAdvisor.
