Julio Bruno

And it is choosing the Android as its platform of choice. Last week, TripAdvisor announced that its mobile app is now pre-installed onto the new Samsung GALAXY S 4. Samsung will use TripAdvisor’s content to power its own travel apps including Travel Widget, Lock Screen Slideshow and City Information in Samsung Story Album.

TripAdvisor has added exclusive features to its application, including Single Sign-On with a Samsung ID, the ability to load details of hotels and flights found on TripAdvisor into the phone’s native calendar app; and the ability to load contact information for a hotel or attraction to the GALAXY S 4’s Contacts list.

“This will give us access to so many new mobile customers,” said a visibly excited Bruno, who said that the mobile story was particularly exciting in Asia where consumers have leapfrogged straight onto mobile. “In Asia, consumers are doing everything on the mobile.”

Currently, TripAdvisor, which achieved 200 million unique users last year, has 45 million mobile users a month and its app has seen 30 million downloads.

Between 2010 and 2011, Bruno said that mobile searches on TripAdvisor went up 3,000% and while numbers have not yet been tabulated for 2012, “you can expect exponential growth”.

In line with the shift towards mobile, TripAdvisor Business Listings has introduced a Mobile Upgrade for clients, allowing them to push mobile-specific offers. Launched last August, the service has seen positive take-up by major chains, said Bruno. “Mobile users want different, much more immediate offers.”

He recalled a meeting last year in Singapore with a major brand in Japan which brought up the need to have a specific mobile offer in Japanese. “That’s when we came up with the idea of offering this service, by different languages, by domain.”

With 50,000 clients having upgraded to TripAdvisor Business Listings, the service is proving its mettle in helping hotels increase direct business. According to a Forrester study on “The Total Economic Impact of TripAdvisor’s Business Listings”, some partners have converted up to $64 in incremental bookings through the product for every dollar spent.

Its client base grew by 40% worldwide while registered owners in Asia Pacific increased by 36%. And while there’ve been rumblings in the market about an increase in listing fees this year, Bruno said, “The best case study is they keep coming back.”

Asked if he saw the opportunity for a “TripAdvisor Tonight” model, Bruno said, “We are not an OTA. We are neutral as the largest source of user generated content in the world. But you can still have the immediacy within our site.”

The lines though are blurring with TripAdvisor evolving into more of a meta-search model. Bruno said TripAdvisor started flight meta-search three years ago and so this was nothing new. He said it’s not a change in business model, more of an evolution towards an experience customers want – ie meta-search versus pop-up windows – and that the shift towards mobile was also accelerating the trend towards meta-search. 

“The whole customer experience is now about meta-search, it’s what customers want.”

At 100 million reviews, Bruno acknowledges the responsibility that comes with that and “we have to manage it responsibly”.

Reiterating its zero-tolerance policy towards fake reviews, Bruno said, “We don’t take it lightly. Yes, the potential for abuse is greater the bigger you are but the reality to catch them is also greater than before – we have fantastic algorithms and a huge fraud content integrity team.

“There’ve also been a few cases where hotels have told us that they are being ‘blackmailed’ – a customer saying they’ll write bad reviews if they don’t get something. We’ve included a feature in our management centre which allows partners to alert us and we will monitor that customer carefully.”

Given the continued growth of TripAdvisor in contrast with the decline of expert content guides such as Frommers (which has discontinued its print editions) and Lonely Planet (which was recently sold by BBC Worldwide at a loss), Bruno said, “Curated content still has its place but size matters if you are global. People no longer look at just the news, they want to read comments – and the new generation is looking at much more fluid information – from what other people think to what my friends think – that’s why our partnership with Facebook is so important. Experts do not have the same emotional connection with me as my friends.”

Yet, precisely due to this information overload, Bruno said customers would also welcome curated content which is where niche players can find their space. According to TripAdvisor data, the average person reads 10-12 reviews per hotel – so if you’re deciding between several hotels, that’s an awful lot of reading to do.

TripAdvisor’s focus on Asia is clearly evident. Its office in Singapore has more than doubled in size and its different divisions are opening offices throughout the region. And its CEO and founder Steve Kaufer is expected to visit the region for the first time next month.