TripAdvisor Being SideStepped for Kayak? 6 Ways Kayak Can Win

March 17th, 2009 by samshank

Continuing my discussion from my last post about the challenges Kayak will face in competing against TripAdvisor in the hotel review category.

In summary, the challenge for Kayak will be building up enough originally-posted reviews to be perceived as a credible resource. Given the network effect and brand that TripAdvisor enjoys, this will be exceedingly difficult. Here’s why:


Based on data from similar sites and my own experiences, I expect .2% of the visitors to TravelPost.com write a hotel review. That’s only 1 out of 500 visitors. If you assume 20% of the 7.5m monthly visitors to Kayak go to the hotel category or TravelPost.com, that’s still only 100 reviews/day ( (1.5m * .2%) / 30). I think to really displace TripAdvisor, Kayak will need 2000 new reviews/day, which they can accomplish by increasing traffic or the review conversion rate. It’ll be hard for Kayak to increase traffic by 20x, but they should be able to increase traffic by 2x, and thus the review conversion rate needs to increase by 10x (2% of visitors write a review).

A great product experience (which I’m sure they’ll deliver), won’t get them this order of magnitude shift, nor will a strategy of aggregating review snippets from hundreds of sources. There are already a lot of sites that do a nice job at review aggregation, from UpTake to OpenList to Yahoo Travel and even TripAdvisor themselves. So here are some ideas to truly disrupt the hotel reviews space – mostly ideas that are too difficult, risky or expensive for TripAdvisor to attempt.

Recommendations for Kayak

  1. Share the love. Develop a revenue share with users who write more than 10 great reviews – give them a share of Kayak Network CPC revenue that originates from the pages where their review appears. This model has worked very well to get user-generated content traction with HubPages and Squidoo.
  2. Shock and awe. In the short term, to generate interest and initial content, give away $5m in the form of $5 vouchers for use when booking a hotel on Kayak in return for writing a high quality review. Assuming 80% breakage, this program would only cost $1 per review (and the costs could be partially or fully subsidized by a supplier.)
  3. Integrate with TripIt. As a tactic to better target the review subsidy, an integration with TripIt via their API could help make selective cash offers to pay users (who have stayed in a hotel that is lacking a recently-posted review) to write a new review.
  4. Integrate with Facebook Connect. This way, users don’t have to create a separate TravelPost account to write a review (and also so the review is sent to their Facebook newsfeed when posted). TripAdvisor was a launch partner, but I cannot find the Facebook Connect implementation anywhere. Perhaps they pulled out for technical or strategic reasons?
  5. Integrate more deeply with Kayak. This would help detect with a high degree of probability when someone has stayed in a hotel (based on tracking supplier leads), and remind them to write a review about their stay. This could be done on the home page for people when they return to Kayak after the stay, or via an email.
  6. Expand TravelPost to flight reviews. This would take on the rather tired product experience at SeatGuru. 80% of Kayak’s traffic is to the flight category, and getting this passionate and loyal category of users to contribute content seems like a far lower hurdle to cross. In terms of flight-related content, there’s so many topics related to flying that have not been adequately captured online. How about reviews of pilots, food choices, entertainment options, bathroom cleanliness, time spent on the runway, time spent waiting for luggage, etc. They could get posting velocity traction here and convert the users to hotel review posters.

Or, perhaps TravelPost

is a head fake meant to pull TripAdvisor into a defensive posture to protect its core business instead of invest in metasearch. After all, the most famous quote from “The Art of War” is that “all warfare is based on deception.”

It’ll be fun to watch this fight from the sidelines and focus on my own battle (and associated tactics of deception.) Do you think Kayak has a chance to dominate hotel reviews? Do you see a particular tactic they could use that’s not mentioned?

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Posted in Online Travel Industry | 8 Comments »

8 comments.

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Sam,

Thanks for your great post

I agree with you :

>> contributions by users need to have some reward.

>> In fact you have 2 key for a tactic : the hotel and the contributor

As TripAdvisor don’t have much respect for the hotel and don’t have good image in the hotel industry (feedback for France market), it’s maybe a good way to battle in this way and to “give” more services and tools to hotel in the TravelPost plateform.

best regards

Claude

Posted by Claude on March 18th, 2009.

@Claude
Great point about leveraging the fact that TripAdvisor isn’t well regarded by many hotels. In fairness to them, as the leader in hotel reviews, there are times when they need to take a heavy handed approach (such as saying “no” to removing negative reviews unless fraud is indicated.) Yelp is now facing similar merchant push-back here in the United States – it comes with being a neutral platform – not everyone can be your friend and the squeaky wheel makes the most noise (at least online!)

I think confirmed stay reviews (ie with tripit integration) are a key answer to this problem. It builds trust for the hotel and for the reader.

Posted by samshank on March 18th, 2009.

@Sam,

Yes, Trust it’s the key and Tripit integration or with other plateform could be a great way.

The problem it’s to avoid “fake” reviews from both hotel or tourist.

Also TravelPost could be more “sexy” in their home page. Some photos and image could help. Also a better FAQ and tutorial can help the readers….they can change their “Hotel Review Guidelines” …images or cartoon tutorial.

Best

Posted by Claude on March 18th, 2009.

[...] You can read the original posts about the strengths and weaknesses of TripAdvisor vs. Kayak + TravelPost.com and tactics that Kayak can use to dethrone TripAdvisor. [...]

Posted by How Kayak can beat TripAdvisor in the hotel review market on March 18th, 2009.

Sam: I think paying hotel-reviewers would stink up the works and taint the credibility of review sites, which already are feeling the heat. Kayak will gain share by aggregating reviews from around the Web, and by word of mouth if the product is genuine and provides value. Can it catch TripAdvisor? We’ll see, but instant results aren’t in the offing. You talked about Expedia’s conflicts with TripAdvisor. What about the conflicts inherent in paid reviews? At any rate, I found your posts thought-provoking and great at spurring some dialogue.

Posted by Dennis Schaal on March 20th, 2009.

Hi Sam, thank you for your insightful post. I recall writing to you a few years back and asking if you if (TravelPost) could add RSS for individual hotel reviews so that hoteliers could monitor and even add these reviews to their own sites. I was delighted that you responded by initiating this within weeks. TravelPost was the first to implement this and TripAdvisor followed your lead. Since then TripAdvisor has been implementing even more specific support via the “owner”pages, and as of recently even more customizable widgets. TravelPost however has discontinued RSS but in a recent communication with them they explained this would come back…In fact the even told me this feed would include owner responses! I have noted their recent changes but no RSS feeds yet. Perhaps time for a follow up.

With regards to your comments on how Kayak or TravelPost can win, I had some suggestions myself based on my observations.

My observation, something that also has been pointed out many times by others, there continue to be the issues with the validity of reviews. Whether it is linked to a site (company) that commercially has something to gain or whether the positive reviews are stimulated (via payment) all are valid questions consumers should take into account. But it is this independence has been TravelPost advantage and I believe can be exploited more, even now when Kayak is the parent company.

Not only do we see trends towards more direct, it is Kayak’s business model that supports this much better. They are in that way much more hotel friendly.

Because of these two observations I believe Kayak / TravelPost can win by paying close attention to this and reach out to hotels even more by providing an API that allows hotels to directly link the booking to a review. By providing such a link, the review that was initiated via a booking (even direct from the hotel) could be “marked” as authentic / true guest. TravelPost could even go as far as providing the service to send the follow up message to guests, customized by the hotel in which the guest is encourage to publicly share their experience. Hotels need independent third parties to host these reviews while consumers do not trust review listing that are controlled (filtered) by the hotel themselves. TravelPost can be the first to provide this service.

In short if TravelPost would add an API that would allow for deeper integration to the hotels direct booking process it would increase the number of reviews posted, and it would increase the authenticity that the reviews are from true guests. RSS feeds that include owner response would also encourage hoteliers to integrate these reviews on their sites which will have significant SEO effect as well.

Hoping to see some more responses that perhaps would encourage TravelPost to do this.

Posted by Bart LePoole on March 24th, 2009.

[...] there are opportunities for TravelPost to gain market share. The fact that TripAdvisor does not share revenue with the [...]

Posted by Is TravelPost the new TripAdvisor? | Hotel Marketing Strategies Blog on March 24th, 2009.

[...] theories. Either Kayak is really trying to beat TripAdvisor in the hotel review market, or “TravelPost is a head fake meant to pull TripAdvisor into a defensive posture to protect its core bus….” TripAdvisor’s metasearch product received an exceptional review at Brett [...]

Posted by UpTake vs. TravelPost: Kayak's hotel review metasearch on March 29th, 2009.

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