Is TripAdvisor Good or Bad?
TripAdvisor is world’s largest travel review website. Travellers use the site to read and write reviews for various types of tourism-related businesses, including hotels, restaurants, bars, national parks, tourist attractions, and shops.
But is TripAdvisor good or bad for businesses? While it can increase exposure and brand awareness for a business, it can also be used by disgruntled clients, who may leave negative reviews and unwarranted complaints. In this post, I’ll take a closer look at services provided on the TripAdvisor website, along with the advantages and disadvantages of TripAdvisor for businesses.
What Does TripAdvisor Do?
TripAdvisor was founded in 2000 by Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka. Their initial goal was to create a social media website that allowed travellers to swap reviews of travel-related businesses and travel destinations. It gave visitors the opportunity to tell others about their journeys and the good (or bad) experiences they had.
The website was immediately popular and within a few years was generating millions of page views per month. Over the years, it has grown into a fully fledged travel website which offers:
- Accommodation, flight, cruise, and rental car booking services
- Package holidays
- Travel forums
- Travel-related content including “Things to Do” guides
- User-generated reviews for hotels, restaurants, bars, national parks, tourist attractions, shops
The TripAdvisor website has about 315 million reviewers (active and inactive) who have created about 500 million reviews of hotels, restaurants, attractions and other travel-related businesses.
If your business is in the travel, retail, or tourism sectors, it probably already has a presence on the TravelAdvisor website. Because the website’s reviews are primarily user-generated, you could have dozens of reviews on the website without even lifting a finger.
Is Trip Advisor Good or Bad?
The are benefits and drawbacks of having your business on TripAdvisor. They include:
Benefits Of Trip Advisor
It tells people your business exists
The most obvious benefit of having a listing on TripAdvisor is that it informs travellers that your business exists. A listing will share plenty of detail about your business, including its address, phone number, operating hours, map location, interior/exterior photos, and menu. Businesses can even claim their listing on the website to add more useful information for customers.
TripAdvisor reaches some hard-to-reach consumers
Consumers increasingly rely upon review websites when determining where to travel, which hotel to stay at, where to eat, and so on. They are interested in reading about the experiences of other people and consider user reviews to be a more “authentic” description of a destination or business.
These kinds of consumers are not easy to reach through traditional forms of advertising, so being able to present your business to them via TripAdvisor is an excellent opportunity.
TripAdvisor helps you promote your brand
Developing a strong brand is an essential part of running a successful business. TripAdvisor can help in this regard, by improving brand awareness. Website users will quickly find your business’ brand when they perform a related search in one of the areas you service.
You can prove you are great at what you do
Business reviews on websites like TripAdvisor are considered a form of ‘social proof’ which gives your business credibility in the eyes of consumers. You can also use the TripAdviser website to upload other kinds of ‘proof’ that your business is high-quality, including images of the food you prepare, ammenities, or happy customers.
An opportunity to engage with customers
The reviews left on TripAdvisor give you insight into what customers really think of your business. Most customers are very candid and open when leaving reviews, which gives you a greater understanding of where your business may be failing or succeeding.
You also have the opportunity to interact with customers on TripAdvisor. If someone leaves a positive review, you can thank them and welcome them back to your business. If they complain about your business, you can apologise and make amends in some way.
Listing your business on TripAdvisor is 100% free
The fact that listing a business on TripAdvisor is 100% free makes it an attractive option compared to other forms of business marketing.
Drawbacks Of Trip Advisor
It is a space for vengeful customers to vent their frustrations
Businesses have very little control over the kinds of reviews that are posted about them on TripAdvisor. It is possible for your business to accumulate negative reviews from people who are venting their frustration — even if your business did nothing wrong.
Fortunately, reviews that do not comply with the TripAdvisor review guidelines can be removed. This means that you can ask for reviews which are defamatory against you personally, mistake your business for another, or are clearly biased, to be removed.
Making The Most Of TripAdvisor
The benefits of using TripAdvisor to promote a business clearly outweigh the drawbacks. But to make the most of TripAdvisor, you really need to maintain a regular presence on the website so you can interact with customers.
Most business owners are too busy to perform this task themselves, so they use the services of an online reputation management company like We Love These Guys. We specialise in helping businesses make the most out of TripAdvisor and other online review websites. To learn more, contact us on 0207 018 1949 or via info@welovetheseguys.com.
