Tripadvisor News

Tripadvisor is a travel website that provides reviews, ratings, recommendations, and bookings for various travel-related products and services, such as hotels, attractions, flights, and vacation rentals.

Tripadvisor offers a variety of services to travelers and businesses, such as:

Reviews and ratings: Tripadvisor allows users to share their opinions, experiences, and photos of various travel-related products and services, such as hotels, restaurants, attractions, etc. Users can also rate these products and services on a scale of 1 to 5.
Comparison and booking: Tripadvisor enables users to search for and compare prices, availability, and features of various travel-related products and services offered by third-party providers. Users can also book or reserve these products and services directly through Tripadvisor or its partners.
Trip planning: Tripadvisor helps users to plan their trips by providing recommendations, suggestions, guides, maps, forums, etc. Users can also create their own trip itineraries or browse through other users’ trips.

Tripadvisor brands include: Viator, Flipkey, Cruise Critic, Bókun, SeatGuru, and other smaller niche sites.

Online Travel

Travel Booking Site Mergers and Acquisitions in 2015: Expedia’s Big Year

Priceline's CEO says its "competitive moat is deep and wide." His counterpart at Expedia believes his company needs to get more international. And TripAdvisor's new CFO says it has ample resources for acquisitions. This all should make for an interesting 2016.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Business Travel

TripAdvisor Adds Tours and Activities to Its Suite of Instant Booking Options

TripAdvisor believes tours and activities will be its next billion-dollar revenue business and it is upgrading its platform to enable consumers to book tours on the TripAdvisor desktop and apps. It's all about revenue and making TripAdvisor a stickier site to book everything on the planet. Flights anyone?

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Online Travel

TripAdvisor CEO Asks Investors to Wait a Year or Two for Instant Booking Improvements

TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer gets mystical about the company following "our North Star, navigating our path toward creating the best user experience in travel." Investors could care less about TripAdvisor journey toward the North Star as long as it means great returns on their investments, which ultimately is Kaufer's goal, as well.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Online Travel

Exclusive: Major Hotel Chain Won Financial Protections in TripAdvisor Instant Booking

As TripAdvisor Instant Booking kicks into gear it appears as though it is breaking new ground and becoming a hotel-friendly channel -- for chains that sign up, that is. Chains such as Hilton Worldwide and InterContinental Hotels Group, which have not hopped on the bandwagon, can probably afford to sit on the sidelines for awhile to gauge how the whole thing shakes out.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Hotels

Challenges in Travel Booking 2016: Booking.com Needs to Steal Expedia’s Thunder

Don't downplay the importance of intangibles and narratives in the online travel business. Expedia won 2015. Booking.com won't sit back in 2016. In this transitional year in online travel and lodging on so many levels, you can expect that Booking.com will be heard from.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Online Travel

Challenges in Travel Booking 2016: TripAdvisor Isn’t Afraid of Google’s New Products

This likely will be a year of building out what TripAdvisor already has in hotel Instant Booking, vacation rentals and tours and activities. One big challenge will be how to focus effectively in so many huge areas simultaneously without some getting short shrift.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Hotels

Starwood Joins New Sibling Marriott in TripAdvisor Instant Booking

Starwood's decision to follow Marriott into TripAdvisor Instant Booking begs the question: How long with InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton Worldwide continue to be conscientious objectors? Hint: TripAdvisor officials say they are talking to everyone.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Hotels

TripAdvisor Focuses Instant Booking on the Hotels and Markets That Matter

While TripAdvisor Instant Booking has become pervasive on its sites, success isn't assured. Ultimately, it will be up to consumers decide if TripAdvisor is the place they want to book their travel.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Online Travel

Booking Site CEOs’ Most Quotable Moments of 2015

Travel-booking CEOs say the darnedest things: the Priceline Group's Darren Huston basically said he didn't waste $4 billion on acquiring HomeAway, like he thinks Expedia did, and Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi let the word out that his company had been shut out of TripAdvisor Instant Booking. One can only wonder what they are saying to one another when they huddle in private.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago

Hotels

Will Booking.com Alter Its Vacation Rental Business Model in 2016?

It is very attractive for Booking.com to abstain from charging travelers a booking fee on vacation rentals. But the lack thereof means Booking.com's commissions may not be competitive and shareholders will likely demand that Booking.com maximize the revenue opportunity and impose the booking fee.

Dennis Schaal | 10 years ago