What Are The Benefits Of TripAdvisor For Hotels

‍What's in it for me?

A practical guide acquainting you with a plethora of benefits of TripAdvisor for hotels, emphasizing the need to list your property on TripAdvisor for an increased visibility, improved ranking, increased positive reviews and a lot more features, encouraging you to thank this travel behemoth at the end of the day. It also focuses on TripAdvisor algorithms for gauging the reviews in terms of quality, quantity and recency, mentions in brief about the TripAdvisor rewards and TripAdvisor Business advantages to help your property stand out.

Most of the industries have become digitized over the recent years. The travel industry has also gone to great lengths to cultivate its presence in the online domain. One of the leading players in this field is the giant TripAdvisor. With over 884 million reviews of the world’s leading hotels and 490 million monthly active users, hoteliers across the globe are striving hard to get their properties and accommodations on this platform.

Indeed, TripAdvisor for hotels comes with unbelievable perks and therefore, a listing on TripAdvisor is something that you need to get started with today if you haven’t already! This will enable you to reap the maximum benefits of TripAdvisor for the good future and overall performance in the travel & hospitality sectors.

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TripAdvisor & Hotels? What’s The Relation Overall?

Imagine you find yourself lying awake in bed at an early hour in a motel/hotel in the outskirts of a town in a remote part of the world previously unheard of by most of the people you know. While your struggle with sleep continues to persist with a shroud of anxiousness keeping you from falling asleep, you can’t help but eavesdrop on the wide variety of activities going around you.

While you are about to get lost in the loop of the cacophony of the multiple sources of noise that keep you awake, you are dragged into reality with the sudden realization of an unwanted trespassing attempt that was currently ongoing...

        ...Someone was trying to break into your room, but, instead of throwing a chair under the doorknob as a sign of the first line of defense, you held your breath and waited for the intruder to abandon the project due to the sudden overflowing of guilt and mercy in him.

As soon as the sun made its existence a little more prominent, you scoot down the hall and without wasting even a second raised the incident at the front desk only to be met with an uninterested glance and a grave silence. They try to make it seem like a normal incident by not providing the level of attention it deserves.

Fuming coupled with a tinge of embarrassment, you turned towards the highest authority in the world of international travel, perhaps, one of the only entities in the world, to which every museum, hotel, and restaurant attraction in the world is beholden: and here it is- you left the property a bad review on TripAdvisor.

So, if we really have to define this relationship between TripAdvisor and hotels, in a nutshell, TripAdvisor is a platform where we visit to criticize, purchase and praise our way through the inhabited world. At its core, TripAdvisor is a guestbook, a place where people record the lows and highs of their holiday experiences for the benefit of future guests and hotel proprietors. But this guestbook lives on the internet, where its contributors continue swapping advice, memories, and complaints about their journeys long after their vacations have come to an end. It is estimated that every month about 456 million people – about one in every 16 people on earth – visit some tentacle of TripAdvisor.com to plan or assess a trip.

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What is A TripAdvisor Listing?

A listing is a business's page or place on TripAdvisor. It primarily contains the location, traveler ratings, popularity ranking, photos, and reviews. This page may also have content that the business provides, such as Management Responses and Management Photos to traveler reviews. Having a listing comes packed with mind-blowing benefits of TripAdvisor which we will be taking up later in the course of our discussion. But all of this can be made achievable only by registering your property on TripAdvisor and claiming your listing. How?

Benefits Of TripAdvisor: How Great Is TripAdvisor’s Hold?

Currently, the website of TripAdvisor is available in about 49 markets and 28 languages. TripAdvisor is renowned for its popularity ranking. This usually ranks hotels based on the scores from the travelers.

The primary aim of the statistics depicted in the image above is to prove that your audience has a high level of trust in the ratings and reviews on TripAdvisor. Therefore, neglecting TripAdvisor listings can be devastating for you and your business.

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Benefits Of TripAdvisor: Why Do Properties Need To Get A TripAdvisor Listing For Themselves?

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Being one of the biggest travel websites in the world, TripAdvisor plays a crucial role in providing an equal platform for both hoteliers and travelers. TripAdvisor is often regarded as the Google of the traveling ecosystem. In other words, what Google is to search, Uber is to cabs, Amazon is to books, TripAdvisor is to travel search. It is often considered to be so dominant that it is almost regarded as a monopoly.

Negative reviews are often considered to be devastating for a business, so hoteliers tend to think of them in rather dismissive terms. The emergence of concepts such as “reputation economy” has resulted in the spawning of a shadow industry of fake reviews, that can be traded, sold, or bought online.

In the case of TripAdvisor, this particular trend usually amounts to an existential threat. TripAdvisor’s business apparently depends or revolves around the concept of having real consumers post real reviews.

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TripAdvisor promises to benefit your property in multiple ways that are hitherto unimaginable by you. Having said that, here are a few significant benefits of TripAdvisor:

• Empowers your business to widen its reach by attracting and engaging potential customers.

• With your TripAdvisor business account, you can lure the guests to check out your property by visiting your website and book with you. In some cases, it can also subtly aid in getting direct bookings. This is by far one of the biggest advantages of TripAdvisor for hotels.

• With the TripAdvisor Business Advantage feature which depicts an evolution of your Business listings subscription product, launched in 2010, you can get a lot of privileges and promotional features that help market your property better, improve your online reputation and differentiate your property from that of the competitors.

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How TripAdvisor’s Popularity Ranking Is A Good Performance Indicator For The Hotels

TripAdvisor’s popularity ranking is primarily based on the reviews posted by users and it reflects the impression of the users of a certain property. The popularity ranking of an organization is more important than you might realize. The closer you are to the top, the chances of the users finding your business when they search for properties in your area increases exponentially. The three primary factors that impact your Popularity Ranking are as follows:

• Quality of Reviews
• Quantity of Reviews
• Recency of Reviews

Click here to read a step-by-step guide on how to improve your popularity ranking on TripAdvisor

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• Quality of Reviews

Popularity rankings are usually impacted by higher bubble ratings. You can set the expectations of the guests prior to their arrival by ensuring sufficient information is provided regarding the business and all of it is up to date and accurately reflects your business. You should try and fulfill or exceed the expectations of the guests in order to keep the positive reviews flowing towards you.

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• Quantity of Reviews

You should encourage guests to write reviews since having more reviews is apparently better for your Popularity Ranking.

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• Recency of Reviews

Recent reviews usually carry more weight in your ranking, whereas, the impact of older reviews decreases over time. Therefore, it is advisable to keep encouraging guests to share their experiences in the form of feedback online. However, please note that commercial relationships with Tripadvisor do not have an impact on your Popularity Ranking. Tripadvisor takes the integrity of content very seriously. All reviews must be authentic narrations of the users.

Again, it is strongly recommended not to write reviews yourself or ask friends or employees to do it. You can check what is and isn’t acceptable from their guidelines. Businesses that breach the rules stand to be penalized, and their Popularity Ranking also suffer. Finally, it all comes down to great hospitality. Therefore, giving your customers a memorable experience, learning from the feedback, encouraging reviews, and enjoying your success by watching all your hard work pay off is a great way to allow better and positive reviews to keep pouring in.

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Benefits Of TripAdvisor: How TripAdvisor Reviews Play A Crucial Role In Influencing A Traveler's Booking Decision?

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Marketers regard a cascade of online one-star ratings as a “review bomb”. Similarly, positive reviews hold the power to metamorphose an entity’s fortunes.

Prior to the advent of TripAdvisor, the guests or travelers had an insignificant impact on an entity’s business but after the emergence of TripAdvisor and other such travel review websites, the guests or travelers gained much more power to seriously inflict damage to a hotel’s reputation, and the power to make or break business.

In addition, the significance of reviews in terms of the hospitality industry has been outlined in the following section:

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• Reviews Impact Bookings

A recent study revealed the impact of reviews on the decision-making of the travelers which are as follows:

→“83% of respondents indicated that reviews help them pick the right hotel”
→“80% read at least 6 – 12 reviews prior to booking”
→"53% won’t commit to a booking until they read reviews”

Similar trends are applicable with restaurants and attractions:

→“68% of respondents say reviews help them know about attractions”
→“64% read reviews to find better restaurants”

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More Reviews Eventually Lead To Higher Number Of Bookings

According to various academic researches conducted over time, it has been observed that ratings in reviews usually tend to become higher over the course of time. This is because guests often have high expectations with a narrow margin of error which often leads to a negative experience that is primarily reflected in the initial reviews.

As your property keeps receiving more reviews, the average ratings gradually increase. Again, more reviews mean a variety of feedback helping the hotels often time locate the target areas with ease to bring about the necessary improvements.

As per the opinion of the researchers, additional reviews help in setting the expectations of the travelers, and eventually, the ratings usually revolve around or centralize around an average that is more accurate. Therefore, it is advisable to consistently collect reviews and yield a better assessment of your hotel which is more significant for both your guests and you. The impact of extreme reviews is nullified with the inflow of more reviews.

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• Reviews Contribute To The Evolution Of The Business

Moreover, reviews can be regarded as an opportunity to assess the performance of your business. This is so because negative reviews usually reflect your shortcomings and the potential for improvements can definitely enhance your service quality and performance. In addition, such reviews can also reveal insights into the expectations of the guests and how you can better manage them.

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Benefits Of TripAdvisor: Importance Of Having A Property On TripAdvisor

While some properties consider TripAdvisor as their best friend, others think of them as their worst enemy. However, in the case of online reviews, it is a reliable platform for hoteliers and is that one place that every hospitality professional turns to.

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Multitudinous Benefits Of TripAdvisor For Business

The decision to choose a hotel or property for vacation is a critical one for travelers as it requires a significant amount of investment both in terms of wealth and time. Therefore, travelers usually devote a lot of their time to the decision-making process in order to select the most suitable hotel in their desired location.

Your potential guests leave no stone unturned while choosing their dream destination and accommodation by going through various social media posts to spending hours reading consumer review sites. And one destination they are sure to go to is TripAdvisor.

Travel review websites dominate the hotel sector and people associated with the said sector instead of underestimating it should realize its growing prominence and importance for the guests. TripAdvisor is the most important player among the travel review websites and is considered to be one of the most trusted sources of getting reviews by former guests.

The type of review usually impacts the hotel’s ranking and visibility among the potential guests and is also open for them to see. A survey carried out by Forrester for TripAdvisor found that a massive 81% of those surveyed said reviews are important with just 3% saying they are not. Therefore, getting listed on TripAdvisor is not only important for hotels/properties to gain the attention of these potential guests but, it also has a plethora of benefits that your hotel/property stands to benefit from by getting themselves listed on TripAdvisor.

Some of the quintessential benefits that your property will derive have been attempted to be highlighted in this section:

• Getting listed helps to increase visibility - “With more than 884 million reviews and opinions of nearly 8 million businesses, travelers turn to Tripadvisor to find deals on accommodations, book experiences, reserve tables at delicious restaurants and discover great places nearby.

As a travel company guide available in 49 markets and 28 languages, Tripadvisor makes planning easy no matter the trip type.” Therefore, getting your hotel listed on TripAdvisor provides you with an enormous pool of potential guests. This, in turn, helps you in increasing your visibility among the users and heightens the chances of getting booked.

• More bookings - Increased visibility and active presence in the online domain often help you in securing more bookings for your hotel. However, a mere increase in visibility does not guarantee a surge in the booking. Various other factors such as your ability to satisfy your guests, having a proper strategy to address the issues raised by your guests, responding to both positive and negative reviews also play a crucial role in securing more bookings

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Advantages of TripAdvisor For Hotels

• Helps to get reviews from guests - Reviews are an important medium for guests to share their experiences with the rest of the world. While positive reviews are welcomed with open arms, negative reviews are often ignored or left unaddressed by the hoteliers.

Therefore, it is important for you to address them, as it not only depicts your sincerity and caring attitude towards your guests but also helps you garner more attention from potential clients. A lot of people take to leading platforms like TripAdvisor to write down their experience. Hence encouraging them and increasing your review count on TripAdvisor will be possible only by having your hotel on TripAdvisor.

• Contributes to the growth in popularity - This is yet another benefit of getting yourself listed. The majority of the hotels do not possess sufficient amount of money to market themselves better or project the quality of service provided by them.

Travel review websites like TripAdvisor provide a level playing field to these properties to garner support and gain popularity through the sheer quality of services offered by them. They do not need to overspend for marketing themselves as satisfied guests are often the best person to promote your business. So, all you need is to provide a high quality of service and a personalized experience for your guests to reap the benefits of treasuring a loyal client over the years.

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Benefits Of TripAdvisor For Hotels

• Results in increased revenue - Ensuring a consistently profitable revenue stream is perhaps the most important aspect and goal for anyone associated with any form of business. It is more so in terms of the hospitality industry, as it is getting more and more competitive and is expected to remain so.

However, the simple secret to ensuring sustainability and growth in terms of revenue depends on multiple factors among which the hitherto stated points are obviously significant. TripAdvisor provides you with a gigantic platform for reaching out to guests all over the world, displaying your quality in terms of satisfying your guests and leaving a positive impression, and elevates you towards an unforeseen magnitude of popularity and eventually ushers you towards success by generating more revenue.

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Gauge Your Performance & Accomplishments With Rewards

You will be surprised to know (if you didn’t know it yet!) that TripAdvisor offers a Certificate Of Excellence to honor hotels or hospitality businesses that deliver consistently exceptional services across the world. And what is amazing is that there is no application process for this certificate as it is based on merit and can be earned by the business over time!

As evident from the information gathered from the TripAdvisor management centre, this platform has its own ways of felicitating or recognizing the top-rated properties:

a) The Traveler’s Choice: It is an award given out to the best in travel based on factors like quality, service and customer satisfaction.

b) The Certificate of Excellence: It is presented (since 2011) to around top 10% of the total businesses on TripAdvisor which have been able to secure for themselves consistently great traveler reviews over the past years.

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Both of these are the ways of acknowledging or recognizing the hard work put in by these businesses to provide customers with the ultimate satisfaction. Again, these reviews come straight from the users and are based purely on their experience. What is this if not one of the many benefits of TripAdvisor?

Business Advantage represents an evolution of the Business Listings subscription product of TripAdvisor, which was originally launched in 2010. Business Listings are usually designed to help accommodations provide more and more results from their respective TripAdvisor pages. TripAdvisor due to its long-term presence in the online domain and the cumulative experience gained throughout the years has projected them into pole position in the particular domain.

While working with their customers over several years, TripAdvisor based on their experience, have learned that customers need a more holistic solution to unlock the full potential of Tripadvisor for their businesses. Based on their feedback and TripAdvisor’s own traveler data, they have developed Business Advantage.

Business Advantage empowers accommodations to better market hoteliers to potential guests, measure and improve their online reputations, differentiate from competitors, and impact booking decisions. Its feature set includes Promotional Features, TripAdvisor's premium products, a best-in-class Analytics Suite, and a Media Suite.

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Benefits Of TripAdvisor: What's Included In Business Advantage?

Promotional Features: You can instantly share your contact details and influence the booking decisions of your potential clients online and on–the–go.

• Contact Details: It puts millions of potential guests one click or call away from booking with you.

• Property page: You can choose three points of contact – email, website URLs, or phone number – to your property's TripAdvisor listing page

• Mobile Click-to-Call: This makes it easy for guests to contact you — and allows you to tap into the fast–growing mobile marketplace. This is enabled by activating one-click calling from any mobile device when you choose a phone number as one of your Contact Details

• Search Links: This includes your hotel website link in search results pages on high–profile TripAdvisor pages

• Special Offers: You can separate yourself from the competitors by sharing exclusive offers on desktop and mobile

• Announcements: You can attract the attention of travelers by sharing your property's latest news

• Favorite Reviews: Showcase a great recent review near the top of your TripAdvisor page

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Media Suite: You can capture the attention of guests — and separate yourself from competitors — with enhanced photo and video tools that showcase your business at its best.

• Storyboard: “A promotional preview that blends together with your best photos and top reviews”

• Favorite Photos: “Use your best photos to inspire and motivate guests to choose your property by highlighting them in your photo carousel and media viewers”

• Cover Photos: “Present your property how you want guests to see it by customizing the album covers on your listing”

• Property Videos: “Post dynamic videos on Tripadvisor — and bring your property to life for potential guests”

Analytics Suite: You can take advantage of the in–depth TripAdvisor data on your property, online visitors, and competitors to drive critical business decisions — and, in turn, create better guest experiences.

• Overview: “Use extensive TripAdvisor data to drive business decisions, manage your online reputation & enhance the guest experience.”

• Reputation Insights: “Measure against competitors on key reputation indicators”

• Market Position: “Find out how traffic and rankings are changing in your market”

• Click Activity: “Discover what travelers care most about by tracking clicks”

• Photos & Amenities: “See how potential guests engage with your TripAdvisor photos — and how your amenities stack up against those of your competitors”

• Demand Trends: “Learn where your TripAdvisor visitors are coming from — and what they look for”

• Telephone Lead Management: “Measure phone traffic by adding a unique phone number to your property page”

• Cover Photos: “Present your property how you want the guests to see it by customizing the album covers on your listing”

• Property Videos: “Post dynamic videos on TripAdvisor — and bring your property to life for potential guests”

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Cost Of The Product

The Business Advantage is basically a subscription-based product. The exact cost of a business advantage subscription is apparently tailored to the different properties that are primarily based on a wide variety of factors such as size, location, etc. It is advisable to discuss the particular pricing model with TripAdvisor consultants.

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TripAdvisor Review Widget

TripAdvisor also lets you showcase your best and latest reviews on both your profile and website by means of a review widget. Click here to learn more about this!

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Conclusion

Indeed, TripAdvisor for hotels comes with unbelievable perks. There are many advantages of a TripAdvisor profile. The importance and benefits of TripAdvisor are immense such as the increased visibility, more bookings, more reviews from guests, etc.

It contributes to the growth in popularity, increases revenue generation apart from the other salient features such as Promotional Features, Analytics Suite, Media Suite that primarily attempt to provide you with a holistic experience in terms of business and increase your overall rankings enabling your potential guests to come across your property when they search the local area.

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