About Hotel 2.0 & Travel 2.0 - Interview with Ian Rumgay from TripAdvisor

Unbiased hotel reviews, photos and travel advice for hotels and vacations. That is the promise of TripAdvisor.

Founded in 2000 TripAdvisor is one of the pioneers in bringing Web 2.0 functionality to the travel sector creating an online community with over 5 million members and 20 million visitors a month. They share travel information and advice, the material going far beyond simply rating a hotel or resort. In TripAdvisor forums for example people can share, discuss and plan. "This is word of mouth on a grand scale", says TripAdvisor Europe communications manager Ian Rumgay. He friendly agreed to be interviewed for fastenyourseatbelts.at.
 

Do hotel managers use your many tools such as reply to a bad review or RSS-feeds?
It is early days for RSS feeds which have just been introduced, but managers do use the response tool which provides them with the opportunity to put their side of story in answer to a negative review. We do know that hoteliers are increasingly looking at what's liked and disliked by travellers and not just about their own hotels.

How long does the handling take when hotel manager use them?
Most responses are posted within 48 hours.

Do you have any numbers regarding hotels who actively ask their guests to post reviews?
We have no figures but just as establishments might have said "if you have a good time tell your friends", they now say "if you have had a good time tell the world using TripAdvisor."

Do you have more information about their experiences asking guests to post reviews?
A very good expample is the Huntingtower Lodge in Scotland. (They activley ask guests to rate them and link from their site to the review at TripAdvisor. For each customer review they will plant a tree. See their site here.) We also know of a hotel that not only asked guest to post positive reviews if they have had a good time - nothing wrong with that - but also provided them with photos which was a bit naughty.

How do you tackle the multi-language issue?
We have sites in German, French, Spanish as well as US and UK language and will expand this in response to demand.

What's your view on the travel 2.0 and web 2.0?
So called Web 2.0 is described people power taking control of the medium and using for social networking. What we are seeing is the evolution of the web from a read-mostly medium to a read-write, or two-way medium. It is sometimes referred to word of mouth marketing.

TripAdvisor was bought by Expedia last fall. See their Wikipedia entry.

Also read my following articles on travel 2.0 in English.

Travel planning today - Greetings from the Easter Island III
Marketing manifesto for the travel industry - Interpretation of Jeff Jarvis
More to come at English+posts.