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Nowadays, TripAdvisor play an important role in tourism industry. Most of people will review TripAdvisor ranking and then make their own holiday arrangements. On-line user review rankings are important in contemporary society. As the TripAdvisor president said, trip advisor is a honest person's opinion. TripAdvisor website plays the role of trusted intermediary for the independent traveler. However, some hoteliers concern about their personal reputation. I read another article that hotel owner Duncan Bannatyne complains the consumer resource is bad for business. For example, if a hotel was reported for bad bug exist, this definitely is a fatal effect on hotel reputation even this hotel already take proper action to kill all bad bugs. On the other hand, as TripAdvisor CEO stated, "Ninety-eight percent of our audience when we surveyed 'Do you trust the reviews,' the answer was 'yes' because they read the reviews, they go and they stay and it matched expectations. The system works." TripAdvisor also take '"most of hoteliers" concern into their consideration, they have a decade of expertise at catching people who are try to spam their system.

From my experience in the industry. I know how much people really depend on trip advisory to help them decide on where to stay when they choose the destination they will be traveling. But I have heard stories on how the Owner of the hotel I used to work for would write on trip advisor amazing comments of the hotel to bring more crowd in and then he would invite his friends to write in trip advisor as well. This makes me question how real are all these comments posted in trip advisor. If you think about it, anyone can make up a profile and fill out a comment about a specific hotel. What makes us so sure about this website overall?

As people continue to move towards a lifestyle that is sustainable and eco-friendly so to are their choices re travel. Llaria Bertini in her ariticle "TripAdvisor launches green initiative for sustainable travel" highlights how the popular travel site TripAdvisor has launched an initiative to assist European travelers in making hotel choices that suit their lifestyle. The initiative called "TripAdvisor Green Leaders" came about as a result of travelers need to stay at more eco-friendly accomodation. Despite that need they had difficulty in obtaining information about hotel practices. Jenny Rushmore, director of responsible travel at TripAdvisor said "We know a lot of travellers in Europe want to be savvy about eco-friendly choices they make on holiday but they don't alwyas know where to go to find that information, " thus the initiative was born. Trip Advisor came on board to provide information for travelers re hotel Green practices , to compare offerings of various hotels as well as to provide reviews not only based on what the hoteliers would provide but from the perspective of persons who would have had a first hand experience at the property. As going green becomes a more acceptable approach for many things in various areas of our lives the hospitality and tourism industry is no exception. As John Alker,director of policy and communication at UK Green Building Council said " For the hotel and leisure sector, going green is not only the right thing to do, its just good business. " TripAdvisor initiative allows us to know which properties are taking the steps towards sustatainability in one place.

This article is a series of several blog contributions for successful emarketing on Hotels magazine's website. "Will the Hospitality Industry Tango with Tingo" discusses the introduction of Tingo.com, a new Online Travel Agent (OTA) website affiliated with Expedia.com that guarantees its' customers to refund the difference if the price booked for the room drops after booking. This sounds great right? While of great value to customers, especially those who are money conscious, the article explains that Tingo.com is another industry basher that ultimately makes hotels appear to be ripping their customers off. This type of marketing tool should be two fold- both industry and advertiser friendly and an OTA website such as Tingo.com will potentially strain its relationship with business in the hospitality industry sooner than later. Tripadvisor is pointed out as an example of a major hospitality industry resource that has damaged its reputation with hotels and is continuing to do so. An analysis of Tingo.com is presented including the evaluation of several factors Tingo.com does not consider under its business model. The article deems both Tripadvisor and Tingo.com as "confused and misguided." In conclusion, this article presents valid points that I have never considered prior to reading about the challenges and perception some hospitality industry leaders have. From the customer perspective, both Tripadvisor and Tingo are highly favored for obvious reasons but not consistently for hotels and restaurants.

The contention between these OTA's and Google is a bit confusing and requires further research, but I think what is essentially at hand is severe competition. Google Flight has implications to cross over into OTA territory, which puts GDS's in a difficult position: support the OTA's or enter another profitable partnership with Google. Amadeus seems to be backtracking on its stance regarding new Google Flight Search, originally implying forming a partnership with Google, and now stating it is taking the sides of "anti-Googlers Expedia and TripAdvisor.

I chose this article as I am an avid user of Trip Advisor! After watching the E-Commerce lecture, I actually started researching more on facial recognition used in the hospitality industry, both in marketing and to keep guests safe. Using facial recognition for safety actually came up quite a bit; specifically as Professor Cilli mentioned on cruise ships to help track and potentially stop a predator or threatening guest. This article is on Trip Advisor's new badge system, that intends to flag hotels if reports or media comes out including sexual assault, crime, and other potential threats to travelers. The idea started from a case filed against Trip Advisor for taking down comments claiming a security guard at a Mexican resort had sexually assaulted a guest who had stayed there. Trip Adivisor claims that at the time, the comment was removed due to explicit material. Not only has Trip Advisor promised to keep comments like this published on their pages, but if taken down they will tell users what exactly flagged their system to take it down. Users will easily be able to adjust their wording and repost. While the exact wording of the badge does not specifically detail why the hotel was flagged (see wording annotated above), as a traveler it would definitely make me think twice. From a management standpoint, getting flagged like this on one of the most used travel websites could completely halt business and create financial strain for months. The badge will last for at least three months and in that time could be seen by thousands of visitors. I hope this small step for Trip Advisors forces hotels to take big step in terms of safety and security with who they are hiring and tracking who is on property.

This article analyzed the performance of TripAdvisor PPC activity in detail, and showed the results of an investigation regarding to hotels' commission level, traffic ranking, and conversion rate, then talked about whether it worth to invest by hotels.  That is useful for hoteliers to work on the ROI, and make right decisions.

This article is about whether to invest in Trip advisor's PPC program. It offers some benefits and correlations between the commission fee and Trip advisor's score. It introduces this program through several aspects, like the cost, the prerequisite. And the program do has some limitations, like the limited expenses control and hotel position preference. But it can provide properties social network, customer satisfaction, word of mouth through this new distribution way.

The most popular hotel review website, TripAdvisor, finally introduced the new dashboard for the hotel managers. With this management dashboard, hotel managers can know their online booking competitors, and also their customer profiles. Before, the TripAdvisor is just for the customer, it offers a board for customer comments and ratings score for each hotel, and there are millions of people searching hotels through this website. On the other hand, this is a great value data resource for the hotel. If hotels can get and analyze that information, it can help the hotel management team make their decisions, and that is what the TripAdvisor does today. It not only offers competitors' page views but also some analyzed customer profile pages, I think this new function will be widely used and become much more popular soon.

What a great tool for hotel owners and managers to measure how well their doing in the market and what customers think about the business and compare the ratings among competitors. Not to mention it is free for companies that are registered with TripAdvisor!

In this article we find out how the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is challenging the authenticity of Tripadvisor as a result of a complaint by online reputation specialist, KwikChex Ltd. The ASA is complaining that Tripadvisor is allowing hotels to submit their own reviews to boost their reputations, compromising the legitimacy of the website's "honest travel reviews." The ASA and KwikChex believe that consumers are not aware of the difference between honest and hoax hotel reviews on the site. The website is fighting back saying that the large number of users that visit the site help balance out the small amount of fake posts. In addition, they state that they have fraud detection systems in place to weed out illegitimate reviews. But most importantly, they argue that those reviews that do manage to creep in do not carry much weight because users read an average of 12 reviews before making final decisions. Tripadvisor is one of the most popular websites among consumers making purchasing decisions because it is founded on real, consumer hotel reviews. Consumers today, specially the millennial generation, rely on peer reviews for important purchases such as travel and hotel stays. As consumers it is vital for us to remain educated and alert, specially when we cannot prove the legitimacy of the contents' authors.

This article shows the importance of guest reviews in a hotel through online websites like TripAdvisor. Before purchasing the antique St. Ermin's Hotel in Central park, management decided to take a look of what customers thought about the property. People said the location was fantastic and it had beautiful physical assets but it needed a major renovation. TripAdivisor played a huge role for the hotel to recover and maintain high level of guest satisfaction raking their property from 480 to number 25 in TripAdvisor's Central London rankings and later jumped to number 18. Websites like TripAdvisor enables management to be informed and up-to-date of what customers are looking for before they travel. At the end, customers are they reason why we are still in business.

This article shows the importance of guest reviews in a hotel through online websites like TripAdvisor. Before purchasing the antique St. Ermin's Hotel in Central park, management decided to take a look of what customers thought about the property. People said the location was fantastic and it had beautiful physical assets but it needed a major renovation. TripAdivisor played a huge role for the hotel to recover and maintain high level of guest satisfaction raking their property from 480 to number 25 in TripAdvisor's Central London rankings and later jumped to number 18. Websites like TripAdvisor enables management to be informed and up-to-date of what customers are looking for before they travel. At the end, customers are they reason why we are still in business.

TripAdvisor just launched the new TripAdvisor GreenLeaders program, which ranks hotels across the U.S. according to their engagement in environmentally-friendly practices like linen and towel re-use, recycling and composting, solar panel and electric car charging station implementation, and green roofing.

With TripAdvisor's launch of the new GreenLeaders program, it will help hoteliers as well as restaurants and other businesses increase their Green initiative commitment. I know for the Florida Green Lodging Certification, it is a simple, yet tedious, form to complete, covering many aspects that can help reduce waste of products, energy, and gasses. Thanks to a bill that was passed in the not-so-distant past, certain aspects of the government travel requires their selection of lodging and/or meeting facilities to be green. This is in an effort to encourage those changes in order to secure government business, as well as to encourage personal & leisure travel, government or not, to choose green facilities. The more we increase the demand for green properties, the more properties will seek to make the necessary changes and commitment. In addition, the application process changes periodically, increasing the information and steps necessary to become green. Through all of that, we will begin to notice bigger steps to be made to save our resources and our environment. TripAdvisor launching this program will only help in these efforts. Along with increasing efforts, the feedback will be a great tool for use when selecting how to make those changes. Sure, nothing is perfect and you will still have those that prefer the convenience instead of the overall "Save the Earth" way of life, but we will be able to see what is working and what may need to be adjusted a bit.

Mobile users are not just playing Angry Birds or checking the local weather, 38% have used their mobile devices to plan a trip and 60% of respondents said they have downloaded travel apps on their mobile devices, according to a TripAdvisor survey. While travelling, 62% of travelers said they use their mobile devices to research restaurants. 51% check their flight status and 46% research attraction, 28% have checked in to a restaurant, hotel or attraction using their mobile device while on a trip, according to TripAdvisor. (travelmole, May 2011). A research conducted by PhoCusWright shows that 75% of frequent business travelers (those making at least five trips a year) are smartphone owners. About half of frequent leisure travelers have smartphones. There's more than enough evidence for the hospitality industry to use mobile apps, and some hotels have already started and are successfully doing it.

Google is trying to grow their business market share not only by being a search engine, but exploring other markets. I read that they had partner with Motorola to make phones and their newest invention soon to come, the smart phone glasses. In this article we see them becoming an online review site for hotels and airlines competing with companies like TripAdvisor, which relies a lot on people that "google" them.

Medallia allows hotels to know about guest experiences and suggestions that might improve the stay of future guest. With this software guest are able to give feedback on their stay and management is able to respond to them in a timely manner. TripAdvisor has partnered with Medallia so that when guest fill out a review they can also submit a survey on the same form. This is a helpful update because it saves the guest time and makes the process of leaving a review easier. This is important because it makes the guest experience better and it encourages more guest to leave feedback.

From what I read, Medallia seems like a great tool to use because it better gathers feedback from their own customers. As we already know, the customer is always first. It does make me wonder how Medallia recognizes reviews? How does Medallia come to the specific stats of a company? With more partnerships, Medallia can gather more reviews across the entire web. I'm sure companies have made a real impact on the business with the use of Medallia. I do believe it's something companies should experiment with before diving in completely.

This article summarizes the results of a report done on TripAdvisors free online marketing platform. This platform offers a management response tool that business owners can utilize to better their marketing efforts.  The results are in line with my opinion. If there is more information on a hotel, I am more likely to chose it over another with less information. 

The findings of this research make very interesting reading. We were impressed to see so many independent hotels using social media - 85% had a Facebook page and 74% were on Twitter, although only 35% actually responded to our tweet. The fact that 37% of the hotels take the time to respond to every review on TripAdvisor was also very positive

While the article I have chosen does not directly speak about GDS, it does show the importance of a system like such in the hospitality industry. When you enter you hotel or establishment into the GDS, travel websites such as TripAdvisor, utilize this database to book trips for its customers. Therefore the contents of the booking site are just as important to the hotel/ establishment. This article goes on about the consumer-based commentary that is allowed on sites as such and how organizations need to know what is it that is being said about them on the electronic Internet stage. "TripAdvisor-branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 50 million unique monthly visitors and over 60 million reviews and opinions," notes article author John Fareed. What does this tell us? That with a database so large and accessible by these booking sites, as a hospitality entity, one needs to ensure that they are shown in the best light with the best service. The hospitality industry requires attention to detail and a unique experience to stand out from the rest. When travel sites have other hotels readily available for viewing one cannot have most of its influence on the website being negative. I just took a different approach on this article concerning the relevant topic and saw how crucial it could be on the company for using GDS if everything else is not in order. Although the GDS may make your establishment easier to find, if there is no substance behind the product or service in this industry, the competition will leave you no choice but to fail.

This article discusses Google's next steps in providing a better/ more efficient search and reservation system for travelers looking to book their next vacation rental. Google has been working with software providers and now successfully integrated vacation rentals into the Hotel Search function. The question is, will consumers shift from their normal purchasing habits (Booking.com, Expedia, etc) or will Google be successful?