Simplifying TripAdvisor TripAdvisor: A World Of Travelers

What Google is to the search engine and Facebook is to the social network, TripAdvisor is to the travel review site. I say this quite often to people. And believe me, it is a world that you need to know inside out. Read on to know more.

TripAdvisor is like a web within web. Founded by Stephen Kaufer in February 2000, the mission has been to help people around the world plan and have perfect trips on any budget. Though this, you can find and book a convenient and comfortable hotel, or find a vacation rental for a memorable getaway. You can check thousands of possible flight itineraries and find the lowest fares more often than any online flight finder. You can download a free, full-color destination guide for travelers' honest advice on where to stay, eat and play. And, further, visit busy travel forums and get all your questions answered before you go. This is the reason for me becoming a big fan of TripAdvisor.

TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel site, enabling travelers to plan their perfect trips and holidays with over 20 million members and 60 million reviews and opinions from all corners of the world. It offers trusted advice from real travelers and a wide variety of travel choices with planning features having seamless links to booking tools. TripAdvisor-branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 50 million unique monthly visitors. The sites operate in 21 languages across 30 countries worldwide, including China under daodao.com. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business—a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to TripAdvisor's millions of monthly visitors.

Here, you can go for insights and tips, a place that is literally alive with experiences and opinions. It's a place that feels like a local neighborhood coffee shop, a café, a pub. A friendly and relaxed community filled with unscripted conversations between travelers, like you.

TripAdvisor works on two levels:

* Travelers who are either planning a trip or writing reviews about the places they’ve visited or rating places they’ve been to

*Hoteliers/restaurateurs, who showcase their business at the world’s largest online travel community.

As a business, TripAdvisor offers you incomparable returns on your investments. TripAdvisor offers a wide range of marketing opportunities, advertising and content solutions to meet your business needs. If you’re a hotel/accommodation, holiday rental, restaurant or tourist attraction, then TripAdvisor is the place to be. And simply by signing up (which is relatively easy and free), you can— # Showcase your business with great pictures (reach) # Receive e-mail notifications of any reviews about you (listen) # Respond to any reviews (stay connected) # Promote your business with new widgets and badges (advertise) # Compare your business with competitors by tracking your performance (articulate).

Put Your Birthday Suit On

This place is the image of you (don’t take it literally, I mean your business entity) that 50 million monthly users will see. You want to look good. Strut around your best stuff. Show off your positives. Treat it like your own personal Facebook profile. Define your business proposition in a friendly and helpful tone. You are here to help them in their travel plans, not to sell yourself. First, ensure your page mentions all your business features and facilities. Highlight any unique services that you provide.

You can manage the core details that appear on your business' TripAdvisor web page, as well as report changes to your business' ownership and other updates. Then upload plenty of good quality images, which will attract bookings. Imagine you were looking for a place to stay in Jamaica. Among others, you find a hotel that gives you a brief virtual tour of your hotel and its services. Isn’t it obvious that while traveling to an unknown place for the first time, a virtual tour is a great relief? It’s like getting an assurance to make your travel comforting. Hence, TripAdvisor gives you the option to upload videos on your TripAdvisor home page for free once you sign up. At the same time, take care to keep it real. Do not promise things that you cannot deliver.

Keep Your Digital Eyes & Ears Open

One of the most important management practices is to know what people are talking about you. Are they saying nice things,are they saying nasty things, or have they simply got you all wrong? Perception, more often than not, is the reality. You are nothing more than what your customers perceive you to be. Sometimes, their perception of you may oppose what you actually are. The perception will always win. You will also most definitely find some interesting hitherto unknown insights about yourself. For example, a sizeable number of people might like a particular painting on your wall because it reminds of something nice. Or they might dislike the same painting for other unfathomable reasons. But now that you know, you can make the information actionable.

You have to constantly keep listening. TripAdvisor It would also pay off to listen to what people are saying about competition, your city or local area, and other attractions nearby. This will give you a clearer view of the bigger picture which will in turn allow you to stay ahead.

Show them you care

According to a recent MSNBC poll, 86% of respondents use travel sites to gauge traveler sentiment before they make their accommodation choice. So the more reviews you have, the better. Responding to reviews is a key to have a perception in your favour. A recent TripAdvisor survey found 76% of travelers think more positively about owners who find the time to reply. Know what your customers are saying about you so you can post a quick response.

Imagine you’re at a party or even a business event. Somebody walks up to you and says “that was an interesting speech Mr. Carter.” What would be an appropriate response to that? (a) Thank you very much (b) Complete ignorance. Turn around and walk away as if nothing happened

Obviously, you would say option (a)! Why I asked this question in the first place, you would imagine. Does it have to be any different on an online review site? Strangely, it is. A negative review tends to get far more responses while the positive ones are most often ignored. The first step is to sign up for review notification e-mails. TripAdvisor will automatically notify you about new reviews for your property as soon as they are posted so you can quickly decide which ones you would like to reply to with a Management Response (MR). Ideally, no review should be ignored. Before you respond, familiarize yourself with the MR guidelines so you submit a response that will be published without unnecessary delay.

Reply in a timely manner to add your perspective on the situation to the original review, and to help demonstrate your commitment to customer service. Be original. Every organization should have a policy on how they respond to comments on social media. Personalize your comments and avoid using the same stock response to show that each individual review and piece of feedback is important to you. Try and address the reviewer by his or her first name. In case of negative feedback or complaints, firstly acknowledge them. Explain what you have done to address problems so that the reviewer and potential guests are reassured that issues have been taken seriously and the issues are being resolved. You have to make sure that you actually do something about it, besides posting a response.

Remain courteous; you are representing your property and should demonstrate that all feedback—both positive and negative—is important to you. Remember, thousands of prospective guests are watching this space. Highlight the positives. Reinforce review highlights and mention related services or upgrades that might interest returning or potential guests. If it is a positive review, a simple “thank you” goes a long way in leaving an impression rather than complete ignorance. Express your appreciation to guests who have taken the time to write about their experience at your property. Show them that your relationship extends beyond their stay.

Similar to their Management Response Guidelines, TripAdvisor also has a set of guidelines for reviews. If at any time you feel that a review about you is not in adherence with these rules, you can submit your dispute and necessary action will be initiated.

Technology Is The Way

TripAdvisor makes it easy for guests to review your business with a range of widgets and badges.

Increase Review Numbers

Print out flyers or order custom business cards that remind travelers to write reviews following their visit. Ensure to direct visitors to TripAdvisor to write a review about your property. TripAdvisor offers you business-card-sized reminders that you can customize with your property's name and address; the first 250 of which are free. You can also download and print free flyers to distribute among your guests. Upload a simple widget on your TripAdvisor home page and web page to encourage guest reviews. Make writing a review simple by providing a text box on your site for feedback. While offering incentives to write a review is against the rules, a suggestion to your guests to write a review is a good idea.

Display Ratings & Reviews

Promote your TripAdvisor rating, customer reviews and awards on your website by adding a couple of simple widgets. You can show visitors that you're featured and recommended on TripAdvisor. Tell visitors how many customers have rated you as "excellent". Display TripAdvisor reviews on your website.

Promote Local Areas

The "What's Nearby" widget helps you promote your area by showing all the top-rated local points of interest. You can also provide direct links from your web page to TripAdvisor home page or review page.

Track Your Record

TripAdvisor for Business is dedicated to helping the tourism industry connect with potential customers. They have built a resource library to help optimize your listing and create the best possible impression on travelers who are researching their trips and making booking decisions.

Business Listings

Once you’re registered with TripAdvisor, you can upgrade to a Business Listing. By upgrading to a Business Listing, you can display your contact information and special offers on TripAdvisor—making your property more attractive to potential guests and easier to book. This, however, does not come for free. Business Listings is a premium listing service on TripAdvisor which works to increase your property's exposure in front of 40 million unique monthly users.

Publish your contact information on all 30 TripAdvisor sites in 21 languages. It allows you to display any three contact points—hotel website URL, phone number, e-mail address, hotel deals URL, hotel packages URL and virtual tour URL—to bring potential guests directly to you. Avoid costly commissions and save on third-party fees.

Create and post ‘Special Offers’ and encourage even more travelers to book with you. It will be seen on several pages throughout the TripAdvisor site, including the accommodation list for your area and your property's page. Entice customers with deals to fill rooms with late availability and boost occupancy during off-season periods. Your offer will be placed at the top of both your property page and destination’s hotel results page, on a map view of your area and all search results pages within TripAdvisor. Rise to the top of search results regardless of your actual TripAdvisor ranking—giving you the edge over local competition. Get more exposure. TripAdvisor will e-mail your Special Offer to travelers who are interested in visiting your area; while your Special Offer will also appear on TripAdvisor's high-traffic "Deals and Offers" tab. Target the right consumers at the right time. Market your property to TripAdvisor’s community of travelers who are ready to book.

Enhance your mobile page. Your contact information will be automatically displayed on your TripAdvisor page for mobile devices—meaning travelers can call or e-mail you with a single click. With a rapidly growing mobile audience globally, make it easy for TripAdvisor’s 15 million mobile travelers to contact you, with click-to-call functionality.

Create a custom slideshow. Make your property stand out and keep travelers engaged with TripAdvisor's new slideshow feature. Simply upload photos of your property and a slideshow of your images will be automatically generated. Get this all for a fixed fee. Pay a fixed monthly or annual subscription to Business Listings, no matter how many customers come your way. Generate a strong return on investment. Track your results. If you’re not happy, you can cancel your listing within the first 60 days and get a pro-rated refund.

In Boxes

1. Rate & Review

TripAdvisor gives you the option of rating and reviewing the different hotels, restaurants and destinations that you have visited. Anyone can log on to and post a review of their experience and once it is deemed original by TripAdvisor, will be posted on their website for the world to see. One can also rate similar places on a scale of 1-5. These ratings and reviews will help fellow travelers in planning their trips.

TripAdvisor also has a private messaging feature that allows members to connect one-on-one so they can ask questions and share travel advice. Members who write reviews usually want to help, so you can simply message someone for more information about a review, Trip List, or photo or video they posted. Maybe they even have an insider tip, or recent information about somewhere you're going!

2. Forums & Destination Experts

The forums are friendly, interactive discussion areas on TripAdvisor where members can ask for and share their opinions, advice and experiences as travelers. You can get a lot of great travel advice in the forums, however keep in mind that any information and advice offered by other members should be taken with a dose of common sense and treated as a starting point for your travel research.

Destination experts are the backbone of the TripAdvisor community. They are regular contributors who exemplify the best of the forums, giving helpful, friendly advice and welcoming new members. They are passionate about the destinations they represent. Whether resident locals or frequent visitors, they have up-to-date knowledge of what's going on in their destinations. They are volunteers, not paid employees.

3. TripAdvisor for Business

As hotelier, restaurateur or an executive in the travel and hospitality industry, TripAdvisor provides you with an unparalleled medium to reach out to your consumers and connect with them. As a business TripAdvisor offers you incomparable returns on your investments. TripAdvisor offers a wide range of marketing opportunities, advertising and content solutions to meet your business needs. If you’re a hotel/accommodation, holiday rental, restaurant or tourist attractions, then TripAdvisor is the place to be.

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