TripAdvisor Relaunch Means The World’s First ‘Travel Feed’
Say hello to the world’s first ‘travel feed’ as TripAdvisor, known for being ‘the ultimate travel companion’, will be relaunching their website to be more of a personalised travel hub. The CEO and co-founder Stephen Kaufer believes this change means TripAdvisor is “going from the world’s largest travel site to the most personalised and connected travel community ever”.
This move into social travel means its website will now work as a social network, with users being given their own profile and feed to post updates, share photos, save recommendations and follow friends and influencers to create their own “inspiring” content. Like other social channels, social media validation will also be present with the addition of a “like” button.
Currently in beta mode, TripAdvisor has more than 500 travel partners, publishers and brands such as National Geographic, Travel Channel and GoPro as well celebrity experts and lifestyle influencers aboard as partners for the beta test.
TripAdvisor describes this latest endeavour as a “personalised and connected travel community, inspiring and empowering individuals with tools to plan and book better with relevant advice and information from people and experts they trust.”
This development follows research conducted by TripAdvisor in the face of changing travel trends, new players and consumer habits. They researched the most important elements to people when planning a trip. It found that although 66% of people said they read reviews, 62% said recommendations from friends and family were more important, while 63% watch videos, 47% read articles and 45% look at photos.
This new social direction TripAdvisor is going in resonates with our own research here at Thissaway that identified TripAdvisor as being the most popular destination for millennials when it comes to researching a UK break. So, them enhancing their website and offering to that demographic is a logical step for the brand to remain competitive in the ever-changing environment if they want to continue to be a millennials top choice when it comes to researching.
TripAdvisor’s latest focus on curated content and personalised feed again echoes our own research that identifies most millennials take their travel inspiration from digital content posted by their peers, so as this relaunch will allow their users to see what their peers are planning and doing it might just work successfully with a younger audience when it comes to researching and booking a holiday and ultimately using TripAdvisor as a social platform.
If TripAdvisor really plans to become the go-to social travel hub it will be interesting to see what happens to the infrastructure that the travel market has already built on Facebook and Twitter. Will TripAdvisor succeed in becoming the one stop destination for all things travel or will people still use their already engaging and familiar social channels? The relaunch of TripAdvisor will be happening later this year, so we’ll have to wait and see.
UPDATE 13/11/2018: TripAdvisor have now relaunched – we’ll be posting again with our thoughts soon!
