IN-DEPTH: Advice from friends and mobile are two of the biggest growth areas in travel and the industry should be looking to harness the power of the market, says Kevin Clapson, Head of UK Display, TripAdvisor

Published: 01 Sep 2011

IN-DEPTH: Advice from friends and mobile are two of the biggest growth areas in travel and the industry should be looking to harness the power of the market, says Kevin Clapson, Head of UK Display, TripAdvisor

By Ritesh Gupta

The travel industry is increasingly trying to tap into the power of social, helping travellers in planning their next trip by making informed decisions on where they want to go and what they want to do.

Travellers have a growing number of online resources to choose from for their trip planning, but at the same time, with the passage of time it has also emerged that average consumer finds travel research to be a time consuming and frustrating process. Consumers currently have to swim through an ocean of unorganised information from friends, guidebooks, review sites and other sources. In this context, users are absorbing recommendations from people they trust.

Advice from friends and mobile are two of the biggest growth areas in travel and the industry should be looking to harness the power of the market, says Kevin Clapson, Head of UK Display, TripAdvisor.

“At TripAdvisor we are always looking at ways to make the travel experience even more social and hope to translate some of the successes we’ve had with Facebook integration on the desktop site to mobile,” says Clapson, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming EyeforTravel’s Online Marketing & Social Media Europe 2011, to be held in Amsterdam (October 10-11) this year.

Clapson spoke to EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta about the status of the online travel industry, the growing number of online resources for travel planning and lot more. Excerpts:

Travellers today expect more information to be readily available throughout the entire travel cycle, as well as more powerful tools to make sense of it all. Mobile, social, search, and local are emerging as key areas of consumer transformation. How do you assess the current status of the online travel sector?

Kevin Clapson:

The online travel industry is growing and developing at a rapid pace, with social media at the forefront. It is continuing to grow its already considerable presence in the travel industry and, in the short to medium term, we can expect to see travel businesses continue to adapt as social, mobile and location-based technology evolves.

Social media requires a personal approach rather than a business approach, so we’re seeing travel brands communicate on a more regular basis, and in a more meaningful way, with their consumers. The increasing communication between hoteliers and guests on TripAdvisor speaks to this – our management response tool, which allows owners to directly respond to reviews, is used by more hoteliers each day.

The mobile space is also a huge growth area for the hospitality sector – TripAdvisor now has 10 million unique visitors on mobile and tablet (May 2011) – up from 1 million in January 2010. This will continue to be an area of ever-increasing importance in marketing and customer retention, which businesses will need to adapt to in order to grow. Travellers want instant, reliable and accurate information at all stages of travel, from planning, in-destination, through to the journey home. Providing this information clearly and efficiently is essential to success.

Travellers have become increasingly reliant on technology for trip planning. But with the growing number of online resources comes an increase in unreliable sources, planted reviews and general confusion about what sites to trust for what services. How do you think this gap is being addressed in the travel industry today?

Kevin Clapson:

At TripAdvisor we take the authenticity of our content very seriously and have numerous methods to ensure its legitimacy, including automated site tools, a team of review integrity experts, and our large and passionate community of millions of travellers that help us identify suspicious content. Occasionally, an inappropriate review may slip through the cracks, and in these rare cases, our members – both owners and travellers - can report the material to us (every review features a “Problem with this Review” link), to help maintain the high quality of content on our site.

According to a recent PhoCusWright study commissioned by TripAdvisor*, 98% of respondents have found TripAdvisor hotel reviews to be accurate of the actual experience, with 69% stating the reviews to be highly or extremely accurate. 92% of respondents agree that TripAdvisor hotel reviews “Help me pick the right hotel for my travel needs”.

As the world’s largest travel site, with more than 45 million monthly visitors, we believe the legitimacy of our more than 50 million reviews and opinions from real travellers is a key reason why we enjoy tremendous user loyalty and growth – simply, if the reviews people read didn’t paint an accurate picture, users would not keep coming back.

*According to a July 2011 PhoCusWright survey of 3,641 respondents.

How is TripAdvisor making it easier for its users to find the most relevant and social content quickly and share their experiences with their friends?

Kevin Clapson:

At its core, TripAdvisor is a social media site with a huge base of members sharing travel information with each other. TripAdvisor now has a powerful partnership with Facebook aimed at providing travellers not only with wisdom of the crowds, but with the wisdom of their friends. Instant Personalisation (IP) is an integration with Facebook that instantly personalises the site for each person who visits when logged into Facebook, surfacing trusted reviews from friends, most popular destinations among friends, and an interactive social map. The integration is the next step in making travel planning even more fun, relevant, and social for travellers and TripAdvisor is the only travel site in the world to have Facebook’s Instant Personalisation functionality. IP enables travellers to view a destination page on TripAdvisor and see the reviews their friends have written first. Also, if you’re researching a hotel, attraction, or restaurant, travellers would first see the reviews written by their friends on that business.

IP helps supplement the wisdom of the crowds with the wisdom of your friends. The wisdom of crowds remains invaluable, but your friends’ advice is an additional layer of highly personalised, relevant and trusted advice, and we think this will help travellers make even more informed decisions in planning the perfect trip. We also think this social layer is more inspirational and fun.

Hotels acknowledge that they need to be aware of the impact the convergence of data from sites like TripAdvisor and Facebook will have on consumers’ travel decisions moving forward. How do you expect the prowess of TripAdvisor-Facebook to shape in the time to come?

Kevin Clapson:

TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel site and Facebook is the world’s largest social network site. Through our Instant Personalisation partnership our objective is to enhance the planning experience for travellers and make it even more social and personally relevant.

Consumers are increasingly using wireless devices for not only searching and booking travel, but they are also exploring locations in a much deeper and richer way. As far as the mobile activity is concerned, a section of the industry believes one should focus on driving unique experiences, which will eventually lead to channel preference. What’s your viewpoint regarding this? Overall, how do you expect the usage of mobile phones in the travel sector to shape up from here on?

Kevin Clapson:

The mobile space is a huge area of growth for the hospitality industry and for many online travel companies, the ability to adapt to this will be key to success. Mobile is a major growth area for TripAdvisor and as a company we’re investing heavily in mobile functionality. For 11years travellers have relied on TripAdvisor’s desktop site to read reviews and opinions from real travellers, but now trip planning is increasingly happening on-the-go. Millions of TripAdvisor users are now using TripAdvisor in a location-based/mobile context and we needed to capitalise on this by developing an app that would deliver the ultimate user experience wherever that user may be.

A great deal of travellers now use their mobile phones and tablets to plan their trips. This audience is growing at breakneck speeds and is demanding instant, reliable and accurate and information – as this demand continues to grow, we’ll see the industry adapt by delivering more and deeper information and services for mobile users.

A recent TripAdvisor survey on the mobile device habits of British travellers revealed that nearly one-third of TripAdvisor travellers have used their mobile to book or research accommodation, while almost half of respondents have used their phone once in-destination to plan elements of their trip, such as making restaurant reservations and researching nearby tours and attractions. We expect these numbers to increase as more travellers appreciate the benefits of travel planning on the go.

Savvy smartphone users are embracing emerging behaviours at a rapid pace, across photos, check-ins, gaming and tagging. There’s lots of consumer interest at this stage, the challenge for brands will be the 'how' - the best way to deliver highly relevant experiences to users based on where they are and what they are doing. Do you think those brands that deliver great geo-location experiences will quickly differentiate themselves?

Kevin Clapson:

We are seeing more and more travellers taking mobile devices - phones and tablets - with them on their trips and using them actively as part of their travel experience, and as the world’s largest travel site our objective was to leverage our position as a trusted traveller resource and extend this to mobile and the ever-increasing in-destination research period.

From a business perspective creating our app was about harnessing the power of the market. One of the biggest trends in consumer behaviour in the past has been mobile. On mobile, consumers increasingly expect desktop functionality to be made available and feedback from our users tells us our app delivers on this.

We wanted to make it easy for travellers to view the hotels, attractions and restaurants nearest to them when they’re in their chosen destination and tap into the wealth of user generated content on TripAdvisor allowing them to make an informed decision on where to go to get the experience that will suit them best.