Site Features:
Travel reviews and ratings, metasearch engine, photos, forums, email signup.  Full-featured travel research site.

Site Report:
TripAdvisor was an early entrant to the travel research area. They were founded in February 2000 by technologist Steve Kaufer and management guru Langley Steinert.

While other sites like Expedia and Priceline concentrated on the transaction, TripAdvisor focused on the research period before the transaction, with the idea that the consumer needed an unbiased source to check prior to reaching into their wallet.

As it turns out, they were right. Today, TripAdvisor.com is the 8th most popular travel site worldwide, according to ComScore Media Metrix (September, 2004).

Although the site was first a content site built to address the frustration experienced by travelers using traditional web search engines, TripAdvisor has morphed into a travel search engine that helps consumers find the most relevant travel information available on the web. TripAdvisor.com built a specialized spider that runs through a list of trusted sites on the web (Fodors, Frommers, IgoUgo, Yahoo Travel Guides, etc) to find unbiased articles, guidebook reviews and user comments on cities, hotels and activities in a given destination. In addition, the site solicits comments and suggestions from its active user-base.

These strategies have helped the site reach an industry milestone, with two million travel reviews and opinions now posted on the site. This compares very favorably against the other review and ratings sites, as MyTravelguide.com claims to have over 100,000 reviews and ratings. VirtualTourist says they have over 1.1 million member tips and over 1.8 Million dynamic travel photos, listings at over 2 million locations, travel resources, background information and much more. IgoUgo.com has 300,000 reviews and 200,000 photos.

In the early years the site was supposed to be more of a CPM (cost per thousand impression) based advertising source. It has since moved quickly to online cpc (cost per click) lead generation and seen great success. As the site says, "In contrast to annoying, irrelevant banner ads, TripAdvisor's contextual-commerce links provide useful information to the consumer and a great return to the advertiser, given sustained click-through rates of over 10%."

The site currently boasts ad partnerships with companies such as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, hotels.com and American Airlines, among others.

The good folks at TripAdvisor were so successful at their work that in March of 2004, they were added to the sprawling IACI/Expedia family. At the time of the purchase, Barry Diller, Chairman and CEO of IAC said, "Trip Advisor is a fine addition to both our extensive travel service offerings and our local group of services connecting customers to consumers with targeted information and offers." Time, it seems, has proven him correct.

The TripAdvisor.com website has gone through numerous design changes, but it has always remained true to it's focus of providing the travelling consumer easy access to unbiased review and rating information. Therefore, it's text heavy, with lots to look at. And that's how consumers (and the Travelsites team) like it. With over 200,000 hotel listings to parse through, there's lots to see. The site has limited branding at the top of the page, with the owl figure. BTW, We're sure that this guy has a nickname, but we don't know it. The site guides the user into research seamlessly, with links to hotel properties and the new TripAdvisor forums area. Users leave hints, tips and photos about their favorite places to visit in cities all around the globe. All the properties and attractions are rated on a scale of 1-5, as well as qualitatively by the TripAdvisor faithful.

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