The world’s largest online travel site has reached 100 million reviews.
TripAdvisor was rated by comScore Media Metrix as the biggest of its type in January. The site combines booking features with user reviews of attractions and accommodations for worldwide destinations.
Jane van der Bol of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association acknowledged the site’s importance to the modern tourism industry.
“This milestone mark for Tripadvisor is evident that social media and online travel sites are a part of a traveller’s everyday life,” she said. “The Cayman Islands tourism product needs to stay connected and updated in the eyes of the savvy traveller looking to visit the Cayman Islands.”
TripAdvisor’s increase in reviews year-on-year was more than 50 per cent. The site covers more than two million tourism businesses in more than 116,000 destinations around the world. Because the reviews are written by actual travellers, the content is seen to have credibility both from an industry point of view and for potential visitors checking out travel options.
A recent study by Phocuswright noted that 87 per cent of users said the site helped them “feel confident about [their] decisions”. The TripAdvisor-commissioned survey of 2,739 random visitors to the site was taken in September 2012.
Three key reasons travellers cited for writing hotel reviews were:
I feel good about sharing useful information with other travellers
I wanted to share a good experience with other travellers
I feel that I’m part of the TripAdvisor social travel community.
Steve Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of the Internet site, said that the average review rating in 2012 was 4.1 out of 5.
“Travellers the world over want to have the perfect trip, and nothing helps travel planning more than real reviews from real people who have been there before,” he said. “Having 100 million reviews and opinions adds remarkable perspective to any travel-planning decision, and we thank our passionate community as their insights continue to increasingly help travellers plan and have the perfect trip.”
The user base continued to grow with 200 million unique users per month and around 60 user contributions per minute, he said. For a hotel in the top 500 searched destinations on TripAdvisor, the average number of reviews is 139 and the average number of candid photos is 534.
Related Videos
