TripAdvisor’s New ‘Travel Feed’ to Bring Users Even Closer

Stephen Kaufer, CEO and co-founder of TripAdvisor, introduces the new TripAdvisor travel feed in New York.

In efforts to meet the growing demands of a constantly evolving market, travel review and booking portal TripAdvisor presented this week its new site and mobile experience that aims to link users with brands, experts and influencers in order to stimulate travel and offer ideas through social media.

With over 456 million monthly users and more than 661 million reviews and opinions, TripAdvisor will by the end of the year launch its enhanced offering that aims to “assist” users in planning their future trips through social media recommendations by friends, fellow travelers, travel experts, publishers, and brands, and has invited more than 500 partners including National Geographic, the Travel Channel, Business Insider, GoPro, PopSugar, and The Knot, to join.

TripAdvisor users will be able to create their own profile page, post photos and videos, follow friends, brands and influencers and thus get personalized travel advice. The idea is to establish the most personalized and connected travel community that will inspire social media users to plan and book better with relevant advice and information from sources they trust.

“TripAdvisor is poised to disrupt the travel industry once again as we create a more personalized and connected community,” said Stephen Kaufer, CEO & co-founder of TripAdvisor.

“The new TripAdvisor is the one travel site that brings together social-assistive tools, amazing content and our existing booking capabilities to merge the joy of planning and discovery together into a single experience. We are assisting our members at each step of their journey as we become a more personalized, inspirational and useful TripAdvisor,” Kaufer added.

TripAdvisor has evolved into one of the world’s most influential travel tools. According to a 2017 Oxford Economics Study, the platform has influenced 546 billion dollars (or 10.3 percent) of global tourism spent annually in the travel and hospitality industry as consumers sought review content as a part of their decision-making process.

Another study conducted by comScore this year found that 60 percent of people booking online went to TripAdvisor during the travel planning and booking process, while 74 percent used TripAdvisor when booking on hotel websites.

The revamped TripAdvisor site and mobile offering is scheduled to come out of beta and launch globally later this year across all markets and languages where the company operates.