

Inside the Mad, Mad World of TripAdvisor - khc
http://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/diy-trips/Loudsourcing-How-TripAdvisor-Is-Changing-the-Way-We-Travel.html

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jpatokal
As the founder of Wikitravel Press and an ex-Lonely Planet employee, it
depresses me to no end that the world's default source of travel information
is completely copyrighted and controlled by a totally opaque corporation knee-
deep in hock to the travel industry's own commercial interests.

I continue to believe that Wikivoyage, the CC-licensed and Wikimedia-hosted
fork of Wikitravel, holds great promise, but I've also come to believe that
travel reviews of points of interest and the wiki format are conceptually
incompatible. As this article illustrates, one man's Angkor Wat is another's
pile of boring rocks, and you'd need to build a hybrid -- a Wiki for factual
info, and unlimited personal reviews -- to get the best of both worlds.

[https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Main_Page)

~~~
abandonliberty
I'm quite saddened by the wiki voyage/travel situation.

It's improving, but voyage still trails travel's 4181 alexa rank at 22,638.

That's a huge gap. I've seen an overall drop in content quality and accuracy
compared to the pre-internet brands era.

~~~
caminante
When I looked at the two last summer, it wasn't clear that the two were
separate. I was surprised to learn of the difference.

Why was WikiVoyage chosen?

~~~
jpatokal
This blog post of mine summarizes some of the key differences:
[http://gyrovague.com/2013/01/14/free-travel-guide-
wikivoyage...](http://gyrovague.com/2013/01/14/free-travel-guide-wikivoyage-
comes-out-of-beta-and-is-already-kicking-ass/)

And this is my version of how the split came to be:
[http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-
abandon-i...](http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-abandon-
internet-brands-join-up-with-wikipedia/)

~~~
caminante
In hindsight, I phrased my question poorly -- sorry.

My question pertained more to branding. Why the name "WikiVoyage?"

I understand Wiki* namespace lock-in due to the Wikimedia relationship, but it
doesn't seem like a great differentiator from WikiTravel. IMHO, I don't think
the lay person gets the difference. Though "voyage" is a synonym for travel
(and the word for travel in French), it associates closer to sailing and
cruises.

That said, I did find your blog entries interesting. Thanks!

~~~
jpatokal
Because a) there was an earlier German fork set up under that name, and b) the
community could not agree on a better name. Personally, I liked "Wikinomad",
but them's the breaks.

[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/Naming_Process](http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/Naming_Process)

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caminante
I found the research study interesting --
[https://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/report...](https://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-16421.html)

 _1. "if a hotel increases its review scores by 1 point on a 5-point scale
(e.g., from 3.3 to 4.3), the hotel can increase its price by 11.2 percent and
still maintain the same occupancy or market share"

2."1-percent reputation improvement leads up to a 1.42-percent increase in
revenue per available room (RevPAR)"_

#1's substantial

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jghn
I was hoping that his was about the inside as an me mployee. I don't know
anyone who has worked there but via some third hand reports and he never
ending recruiter spam I get (not to mention the content of those messages)
leads me to believe its a crappy job. But, I don't know that which is why I
wanted to see _that_ article

~~~
formerly_ta
Ex-employee here.

It's got its up-and-downs. It's a highly profitable company that still wants
to hire smart people, so it bills itself as a "startup culture." Then you join
and you're in a multi-level org chart with different silos literally competing
for resources and attention. Very corporate. So their turnover is pretty fast,
particularly in engineering.

It is a very profitable company with legit tech and legit scale, so there are
some great experiences to be had there if you're lucky enough to land on the
right team or impress the right boss. And because they have a pretty high bar
for hiring and a reasonably high burnout rate, having worked a few years at TA
means something to many Boston tech companies.

~~~
eropple
Leaving the green-colored names at the door (none of this is something I
haven't or wouldn't say to anyone in management there, so it's not like I'm
talking out of school), I'd agree with pretty much everything said here.
Especially the bit about other tech companies--I still get asked what I did at
Trip even though it was my first job out of college. It's not at all a startup
culture and if you go in expecting the kind of autonomy and trust you see at a
smaller company you may be very disappointed, but the consolation prize of an
above-average (not top-of-market) salary, easy work, and a few impressive-
sounding bullet points for the resume may be worth it.

As a first gig out of college, it was great and I don't regret spending time
there. It was a gentle-enough introduction to large corporate structure and
while I'm not temperamentally suited to "Cog #541" type of gigs, it's easy to
see why as a company it's very successful.

~~~
walterbell
I wonder what would happen if Yelp joined the hotel review business.

~~~
eropple
I don't know if they'd _lose_ , but I don't know if they'd make a dent in
TripAdvisor as opposed to the smaller competitors. People go where the data
is, and Trip has the reviews and has the reputation for trustworthiness. Yelp
doesn't have a good rep as far as trustworthiness goes--the allegations of
paying to hide bad reviews, etc.--and would be starting from zero or near-
zero.

(And, having seen a few organizations handle fraud in user-generated content,
I think Trip does a pretty good--not great, not perfect, but better than
anybody else I've seen--job of it.)

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gasull
I'm late to this thread, but I met a restaurant owner in Barcelona who said
TripAdvisor employees demanded to have lunch for free in exchange of good
ratings. He declined and got bad ratings.

He also got a visit from Yelp, that didn't demand anything in exchange for
listing his business.

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bambax
It's amazing how the importance and prevalence of Trip Advisor are non-obvious
to many hotel managers.

Responding to TP comments usually isn't very high on their priority list, and
even lower is actually addressing the problems underlined in those comments.

And then they complain that bookings are going down, and come up with
imaginary reasons.

Does Trip Advisor sell "trends" to hotels ("here are where your bookings are
going" / "see how your competitors are doing", etc.)? If it doesn't it should
-- that would be a big help.

~~~
ojbyrne
[http://www.tripadvisor.com/BusinessListings-g1-World.html](http://www.tripadvisor.com/BusinessListings-g1-World.html)

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pbreit
It's a testament to TripAdvisor management that it hasn't gotten mired in
controversy quite like Yelp has. I think this is mostly to do with some bad
execution on Yelp's part (review filters, undisciplined salespeople).

~~~
khc
Or maybe because TripAdvisor actually brings measurable revenue to hotels,
unlike Yelp. Other than some opentable integrations most restaurants don't
immediately see how much value is Yelp bringing to them.

~~~
walterbell
Do hotels have a way of attributing revenue to TripAdvisor?

~~~
khc
you can make bookings through tripadvisor

~~~
walterbell
I wonder what percentage of hotel bookings now come directly from TripAdvisor?
Presumably this is limited to consumer bookings, rather than corporate travel.
I've used TA often for research but never for booking.

