TripAdvisor buys mobile planning site Everytrail

Expedia's TripAdvisor announced the purchase of mobile planning site Everytrail. Tnooz has the full story here. Press release here

I have updated my table tracking all of sixteen acquisitions by TripAdvisor here.

The BOOT in the Australian - "search and you shall find"

Travel journo Dave Carroll had a piece in weekend version of the Australian titled "Search and you shall find". In the article he talks about some of the changes in search patterns by consumers in online travel. He interviewed me for the piece. I share my views on different measures for authority, the tastegraph and the sociograph - building on my Tnooz piece "Google instant is just the beginning in the search revolution in travel".

Full piece from Dave with my comments is here. I mention tripadvisor, jetsetter, bonvoyou, triporati. joobili and (in a where did they go moment) gliider.

WebInTravel: 10 things I overheard from companies (Tnooz)

Over at Tnooz I have written two posts following the WebInTravel conference in Singapore last week. Part 1 is 10 things I overheard from companies. Check out the post called "Part One of Two: The Asian online travel zeitgeist". Companies covered include Wotif, Cleartrip, TripAdvisor, DaoDao (TA in China), Mobilizy, Kaha, eLong, AirAsia, Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Abacus and Accor. Part 2 tomorrow is on industry trends.

TripAdvisor Sessions: talking tastegraph and sociograph with TripAdvisor Product VP Adam Medros

In part 1 of my interview with TripAdvisor VP of Product Adam Medros we talked through the launch of the TripAdvisor Trip Friends product and the challenges/benefits of living in a Facebook world.

In this part 2 we review the sociograph vs the tastegraph as a means for recommending. Recommendation through the sociograph means drawing advice and responses from those in the same social network as a user. The tastegraph refers to basing recommendations and search results on the preferences of and feedback from people who like the same things as the user regardless of the existence or not of a social connection.

I asked Medros what he thought about these two trends and whether or not he thought the tastegraph was a better recommendation process than the sociograph. Here is what he had to say

Medros of TripAdvisor: When we talk recommendations at TripAdvisor we talk about a hierarchy of advice. The top of the hierarchy is the wisdom of friends and this is what Trip Friends enables. Trip Friends does more than allowing you to ask your friends, it lets you know which friends to ask. At the other end of the hierarchy is what TripAdvisor has been doing for 10 years – wisdom of crowds. [The crowd providing] A broader set of advice and opinions than available from a transaction provider. In the middle there is the tastegraph – we call it “people like me”. Where you can filter down the recommendations and wisdom of friends through “people like you” filters. The tastegraph is better than wisdom of crowd but not as good as wisdom of friends.

There are three approaches to collecting data for recommendation engines. Two don’t work.

1. Give to Get: Asking consumers to do a survey of who they are and use the results of the survey to show recommendations. It doesn't work and no one does it;
2. Black box: Take all of the click steam data – put it into the "black box" and produce an answer for the consumer. Does not work. No matter how much consumers tell you they want recommendations this way, they (the consumers) do not believe the results when they come out. This method is easier for a transaction site that has only transaction data to rely on. But for research site consumers are all over the site for many different reasons. Too noisy to trust the click data; and
3. People Like Me and Finger Printing: Try to finger print a hotel or travel experience by asking people to choose similar experiences. The best version of this is, "If you like this hotel in city X you will like hotel Z in city Y".

Almost all of these approaches have a scale component. The wisdom of friends needs the scale of a billion pins from the Cities I've Visited app. People like me need scale to aggregate up the different finger print characteristics.

My Take

I see the value in having access to friends to complement the crowd content on TripAdvisor. This is also a very good implementation by TripAdvisor. That said I feel that the path to recommendations is through the tastegraph/people like me approach more than the sociograph. I have lots of friends, close friends, that have very different interests to me and whose recommendations I won't take.

The first time I used Trip Friends it took a few clicks more than I expected to get logged in and up and running. Once in, I found the product easy to use and easy to integrate into a search. But looking down the list of friends connected for the destination I was interested in (Hong Kong) I was not convinced that any of them knew any more than I did. The one friend I do have that lives and grew up in Hong Kong did not have that in her profile so was missed.

I think the "like button" is going to rule the world one day. By that I mean that tools and products to allow content consumers (online or off) to positively or negatively vote for an item or content (including Facebook, Digg, StumbledUpon and more) will drive the future of content and transactional consumption. But I think this is more likely to happen in a "people like me" or tastegraph environment than an environment driven by "what do my friends think".

Now to you - tastegraph or sociograph - which one will rule?

TripAdvisor Sessions: Talking to TripAdvisor VP Adam Medros about Trip Friends and living in a Facebook world

It has taken me a while to type it up but I wanted to share with you my interview with TripAdvisor Product Vice President Adam Medros on their (now not so new) Trip Friends feature that allows review and destination surfing on TripAdvisor to be combined with Facebook social search features.

If you have not come across the Trip Friends product yet, it allows you to connect your TripAdvisor search to your Facebook network. Practical results are an ability to see who in your network may live, have visited or have knowledge about a destination. This data comes from Facebook friend's profiles and Cities I've Visited "pins". Targeted questions can be asked and answered combining the mass crowd input of Tripadvisor's UGC information and the sociograph responses of a user's Facebook friends (for more on the product see the Tnooz review).

The BOOT is full of stories from me about the evolution of online travel from a transactional activity to a recommendation and inspiration service. You will have seen my interviews with various inspiration and discovery start-up CEOs (Triporati, Joobili, Tripbase, LikeCube) as well as my general posts on the Travel Discovery & Inspiration sector. In part 1 of my discussion with Medros of Expedia's TripAdvisor we discussed discovery, inspiration, product development, lead generation and having to live in a world ruled by Facebook (part 2 here). Here are the details of the discussion

BOOT: How long did it take to build the feature?

Medros of TripAdvisor: TripAdvisor does weekly releases covering 10 or 12 different projects at any one time. We have a building and launching mentality. It helps that we are a content company, not not transactional based as transactional sites need to be much slower and more careful in their launches. This feature took 5 months of work. Some was working through the detail of how it would work – some rewriting code as Facebook changed their feed. 2 weeks before launch we had to rewrite the private messaging functionally because of changes on the Facebook side.

BOOT: What are the future plans for the feature?

Medros of TripAdvisor:There are a couple directions we want to take the product

1. Big Picture – pushing on working more closely with partners in the industry to talk to travellers and users that helps plan a better trip to add advice from experts to advice from Facebook friends;
   
2. Mobile - We re-launched our mobile site in Dec 2009. Want to add this feature to that platform. Currently getting more than 2 million users a month on mobile; and
   
3. Network effect – expanding the buckets of things consumers can share with each other.

BOOT: What is like being tied to Facebook? Must be hard and challenging to give up so much control to them?

Medros of TripAdvisor: Without a doubt (a challenge to be tied to the Facebook experience). The benefits are clear but also a number of dependencies we have to manage:

1. General dependency: What would we do if Facebook build their own travel Q&A product? We can't worry about it as we can't stop something like that happening and it would go against public claims by Facebook to be independent;
2. API dependencies: Facebook have a tendency to change features and the API often. For example app notification went away and was never replaced; and
   
3. Downtime dependency: What happens if the Facebook API has downtime? Figuring out how to message to users when there is latency coming from not you.

Despite this we need Facebook. We tried to build a version of Trip Friends on our own a few years ago – did not take off because consumers did not want to maintain another social network.

BOOT: Do you think Facebook is or will become a place for consumers to do transactions?

Medros of TripAdvisor: Facebook (the platform) is ready but users do not think that way just yet. Have yet to see any real interest in transacting on Facebook other than within games. Good innovators dilemma. Is like the early days of Google. Both Facebook and Google are going to get closer and closer to the lead generation side of marketing through delivering people to sites that can transact.

BOOT: Any thoughts on letting hotels participate - to get involved like they can in responding to reviews?

Medros of TripAdvisor: Starting to think about that. TripAdvisor serves two sides of the trip equation. The user side of recommending and the industry side as well. Hoteliers should be able to contribute to trip planning experience. As long as users know the bias of the advice. There is room for us to take this functionality and add advice from experts as well as friends.

In part 2 I talk to Medros about the differences between the sociograph and the tastegraph.

What are your early impressions?

TripAdvisor - what did they buy and when

Here at BOOT central we are trying to keep track of the acquisitions and subsidiaries of Expedia’s Tripadvisor. In earlier posts on this we tracked simply by way of a list of acquisitions in reverse date order. With what looks like two deals a year to monitor I have decided to expand the list with some more details. Here is an extensive list of all of the acquisitions made by Tripadvisor since joining the Expedia family.

Company	Sector	Date of Acquisition	Description
HolidayLettings	Holiday rentals	24-Jun-10	UK based holiday rental company (is not HolidayRentals owned by HomeAway)
Kuxun	Meta-search	30-Oct-09	China based meta-search. Kuxun means Cool Information or Smart Information
Flipkey	Holiday rentals	July 15 2009	Boston based holiday rental company
OneTime.com	Deal Search	1-Jul-08	At time of acquisition claimed 5 mm uniques and 30mm page views. One estimate puts deal at $85mm. Onetime do not like being called a metasearch company
Virtual Tourist	Social network	(same deal / company)
Airfarewatchdog.com	Deal Search	2-Apr-08	Site that monitors airline deals especially in low cost carrier sector
HolidayWatchdog	Review Site	1-Feb-08	Hotel and holiday reviews with some deal searching – UK based. Travolution rumour that price GBP9-10mm
Cruisecritic.com	Review Site	25-May-07	Cruse ship reviews and deal search
IndependentTraveller.com	Destination Content	(same deal / company)	Destinations content and information. Includes brand Family Vacation Critic
smartertravel.com	Destination Content	9-May-07	Destinations content and information
Travel-Library.com	Destination Content	(one deal buying Smarter Travel Media)	Also includes brand Frequent Flyer.com
bookingbuddy.com	Meta-search		Booking search
TravelPod.com	Blog Platform Social Network		Platform for travel reviews and blogs as well as networking
SeatGuru.com	Review Site		Reviews individual seats on aircraft to help with picking seat assignments
Everytrail.com	Trip planning	3-Feb-11	Trip planning service focused on mobile platforms

Have I missed any? Official Expedia Inc listing is here. Yes – Expedia owns Tripadvisor (you wont believe how much traffic I get for the question “who owns Tripadvisor”).

Australian Online Market for Short-Lets and Holiday Rentals: Interview with Occupancy.com joint-CEO Justin Butterworth Part 2

A deal merging two of Australia's online short let/holiday rental distribution companies to form Occupancy.com has prompted a series of posts here are the BOOT. In part 1 of this series I shared with you my discussions with Occupancy co-CEO Justin Butterworth (pictured) on the size and mechanics of the market. In this part 2 I will share my conversation with Butterworth on the merger deal itself and what’s next for the sector.

The deal

The deal to merge TakeABreak and rentahome.com.au, two of the four main players in the Australian holiday rental accommodation market, was hatched in Nov 2009 and signed in December. Butterworth is not talking how much but has admitted that the deal was all share deal (no capital raising). An assessment was made between the two companies as to relative size and grow rates to determine how much of the combined entity each would get (again not disclosed). Rentahome has maintained its office in Sydney's Moore Park and Butterworth's co-CEO Craig Davis will stay in the TakeABreak office in Canberra.

They have completely integrated the back end systems to allow for on inventory platform system to cover all 20,000 properties. The interest twist to their integration is that they have maintained the different login screens and supplier interfaces. Different inputs but one system. Butterworth told me that there was less than a 10% overlap between the two brands. The limited cross over was because Renathome had focused on the short let metro market whereas TakeABreak was focused more on regional and rural holiday accom.

SEO rankings drove the deal as much as inventory. Butterworth told me that SEO marketing is the “cornerstone of the business”. He told me that cross linking between the two brands is expected to drive a 30% uplift in SEO traffic for the combined group. Once the email lists are deduped he expects the combined group of subscribers to be greater than 400,000.

What’s next for the company and industry

This deal has not generated the press that it probably deserved. Though the bulk of the booking value and revenue remains with the properties, my calculations on the online short let/holiday rental market size show that Occupancy number 2 in terms of bookings generation in a battle that includes subsidiaries of Fairfax, News Corp and Yahoo7!. The specific challenge for Occupancy will be to achieve number one spot in the face of this competition.

For the whole of the online short let/holiday rental sector there are three general challenges:

1. Live vs non-live: Consumers are looking for instant confirmation when they book online. Occupancy is the online one of the majors that offers live inventory but only on a proportion of its properties (Butterworth is not saying what percentage). It is clear that this is a challenge for all the players;
2. Product certainty when no uniform standards: Star rating systems in the hotel sector are constantly open for criticism for bias and lack of uniformity. The position is much worse in the short-let/holiday rental sector. There is no uniform independent service that customers can go to for comparing the quality of different properties. Butterworth and Occupancy are trying to deal with this through their Rental Guarantee. This outlines the checks that they do on a property. It provides a validation on the details in the description matching the property but the industry is still missing an easy mechanism for property comparison (hence challenge 3); and
3. Building profiling and recommendation engines: you would have seen me write often on the future of online travel being around targeted and individuated recommendations (my EveryYou concept). This is particularly the case for a sector like this where there is such a variety of product is some many secondary rural and regional destinations. The challenge is to be build a combination of technology and human solutions to help guide people to the right properties and destinations.

That all said, the variety and uniqueness of the product offerings within the short-let/holiday rental sectors goes a long way to compensate for theses challenges and is the reason for the growth of a health intermediary market in Australia.

Australian Online Market for Short-Lets and Holiday Rentals: Interview with Occupancy.com joint-CEO Justin Butterworth Part 1

A war is brewing in the alternative accommodation sector in Australia. It is a war that generates a lot less press and pundit attention than the OTA and online hotel battles that consume so much of my time. But the battle for supremacy in online distribution of holiday homes, short term rentals and B&Bs is getting exciting. The latest salvo was the announcement that online corporate/short term rental specialist rentahome.com.au and holiday rental merchant TakeABreak merged to form Occupancy.com.

I had lunch recently with former rentahome.com.au boss and now Occupancy joint-CEO Justin Butterworth (pictured)to talk through the deal, the market and what's next for the online accommodation industry. In part 1 of this post I will share with you our discussions on the online market for short-let/holiday rentals in Australia. In part 2 we will look into the deal and what’s next.

The online short let/holiday rental market

It is a gross but reasonable generalisation that the online accom market is broken up into three sectors. Three sectors that overlap in sharing customers and suppliers but are distinct enough in their offering to be treated differently:

1. Mainstream Online Hotels Market: Led by Wotif but with HotelClub/Orbtizdisclosure), Expedia, Agoda/Bookings and Chain supplier direct sites making for a very competitive business. Online hotels market in Australia is between $1.5-2 billion a year and growing 15-30% (depending on the research firm);
2. The Holiday Park market (please don't call us trailer parks, you wont like us when we are angry): This market is dominated by supplier sites. Big4 is an example. Late to online we have heard claims of 25% of the business is online but no research on market size; and
3. The Holiday Rental sector: After this deal there are now four major players in Australia competing in a $500mm market (see below). The newly formed Occupancy group, the Fairfax owned Stayz . the Realestate.com.au (REA.AX) owned Realholidays.com.au and (at the listing level) the Yahoo7! owned TotalTravel.com.

The short let/holiday rental market is dramatically fragmented compared to the hotel market – goes without saying. Butterworth mentioned that a BIS Shrapnel report on the Holiday Home market in Australia which estimated 500,000 holiday home properties in Australia. Around 200,000 of those are available for regular short let. The rest being private holiday homes that are not regularly rented out.

Butterworth and I tried to figure out the size of online short let/holiday rental market. From our lunch time back of the envelope work we put the size of the Australia online holiday rental/short let market at between $450-500mm. This makes it a quarter to a third the size of the online hotel market. I have arrived at this number through combining two calculation methods – top down and bottom up.

Top down – start with the size of the total market and work downwards

We started with the 200,000 in available stock and assumed an average weekly rent of $1,000 and occupancy at 50%. This sets the full market size based on inventory story is $5.2 billion. Butterworth thought that around 10% of the market is online making a market for short let/holiday rentals of around $500 million.

Bottom up – start with the bookings generated/referred by the major players and work up

Here is what we know about the top players. I had to make a series of assumptions but I think the range is reasonable.

Player	Bookings Generated For Listed Properties	Source/Calculation
Stayz.com.au (Fairfax)	$160mm	At NoVacancy told us they were generating 160k bookings per year (assuming $1,000 per booking). In 2008 told us $100mm
Occupancy	$150mm	Occupancy joint-CEO told me they are generating $300mm in enquiries to properties per year but is not disclosing the percentage that are confirmed. Will assume 50%.
Realholidays.com.au (REA/News)	$45mm	Real holidays is 1% of REA’s AU revenue (pdf). AU revenue ~$150mm per year (pdf). Therefore Realholidays revenue $1.5m per year. If this was a hotel business, $1.5mm in revenue would mean $15mm in bookings generated. Sounds low so times 3. In 2009 claimed 359 paid subscribers and 22,304 listings (pdf)
Others including TotalTravel (Yahoo7!)	$90mm	Assume top 3 have 80% of the market
Total bottom up estimate	$455mm

Combining the top down and bottom up approaches gives us an online short let/holiday rental market size in Australia of $450-500. With the merger putting Occupancy.com’ estimated $150mm year putting them at #2 in the market to Stayz’s $160mm but not by much. Butterworth told me that Hitwise traffic data would put Stayz further ahead of Occupancy than my booking estimates would argue. He believes that Stayz has a lower conversion rates from enquiries. This would make sense as Stayz is likely to get much more unqualified traffic than Occupancy due to the referral of traffic from Fairfax Digital properties.

Much like online hotels, there are different models in the short let/holiday rental sector. The Stayz model is the listing model. Properties pay to be listed on the site. Occupancy.com operating on a booking fee model. Occupancy.com collects net rates and grosses up by the booking fee. Guests can process payment with Occupancy or pay the property direct (who remit booking fees to Occupancy.com). It is clear that the vast majority of the bookings are being paid offline with the property.

The market sizing proves that the online short let/holiday market in Australia is a substantive and growing market. The Occupancy merger puts a lot of pressure on Stayz as the combined volume has closed the gap to Stayz. But Fairfax, News Corp and Yahoo7! are tough competitors. I am looking forward to seeing how they respond. If the war wasn’t intense already, foreign players also have their eye on the market. US giant HomeAway (more on them here) have put up an Australian holding page at HomeAway.com.au – a clear indication of a push into the market. Expedia’s TripAdvisor have bought another holiday rental firm (Holiday Lettings) to add to Flipkey (already in their stable). No surprises. With a $500mm market to fight for, it is to be expected that many more companies will join Occupancy in this battle for short-let/holiday rental customers.

Overhead at Eyefortravel TDS – social media stole my conference

The word social media appeared nowhere in the title for Eyefortravel’s Trave Distribution Summit Asia (they have other conferences that do) but it was the number one topic from presenters on April 29 in Singapore.

In my keynote, I spoke about the rise of transactional questions on Facebook and Twitter. I highlighted a number of examples of consumers using twitter and Facebook to ask questions that are begging for advertisers to provide answers. Opening up social search as a real competitor for Google. Sharat Dhall of Tripadvisor spoke of the never ending flood of user reviews/photos and hotelier responses. Particularly of interest in his presentation was the launch of TripWow and how Tripadvisor is expanding their insatiable lust for content from text to photos. Joe Nguyen of comScore showed the numbers with a left to right sharp incline for Facebook travel stats. Starwood spoke of having 1 million mentions in social media in 2 weeks (though many of us weren’t sure the numbers were right). Brett Henry of Abacus called Foursquare and Gowalla as the future must watch emerging businesses. Morris Sim of Circos Brand Karma told a story of a 4000% ROI on a social media marketing campaign (though admitted that scaling it was extraordinarily hard). Aloke Bajpai of ixiGo spoke of the future of apps and mobile as social devices – as soon as someone launches a more advanced mechanism for app search and discover. Even speakers that started by expressing concern that the conference had become dominated by social media talk ended up talking non stop about the user forums on their site.

It turned me to thinking about whether or not it was fair to hijack the conference and talk so much on this one area of consumer interaction and marketing. On one level it is understandable given that social networking sites are generating the most traffic, buzz, funding and consumer attention. But (as I said in my keynote) we cannot allow ourselves to get caught up in excitement and forget that the number one online battle ground for transactions is still on Google/Yahoo/Baidu/Naver etc. We must get engaged in social networking and content but cannot take our eye, money and talent off the traditional search battleground. My tip for social media was to focus on data, content and customer monitoring first them look to transactions in social media in a year or two (or three). For more on my thoughts see my post ad:tech thoughts here.

Some of the hoteliers in attendance may have felt disappointed that they did not hear more about how to rank on Google, spend on banners effectively, sign up with OTAs, manage content and improve SEO performance. This is was not a conference for talking about what to do now in the places that generate traffic and business. This was a conference for thinking about what was next – where we talked about how to engage with an audience that wants to talk to you and be with you online.

Attendance was solid in terms of numbers with a majority hoteliers, then online agents then technology and service providers. I have been noticing more and more that airlines have all but stopped turning up to online specific conference, limiting themselves to airline specific ones. On the format, eyefortravel are pulling good quality speakers but it is time to do away with the 3x15+QA format. That is the format where each session has three speakers giving a 15 minute presentation each followed by panel Q&A. Conferences like this need less power point and more QA and interview formats. Moving the format away from collective presentations to interview and panels will reduce the sales pitching that continues to creep (and sometimes storm) in and increase the speed at which the conversation gets to the interesting analysis.

Finally snaps to Don Birch who was a great chair. Insightful questions and summaries.

901 not out

100 more posts live on the BOOT. 4 years, 200,000 plus words, 150,000 visitors, 240,000 page views and still going. In my regular "not out series" recap I post a few reminders and highlights form the last 100 posts. It started with 101 not out and continued with 201, 301, 401, 501. 601, 701 and 801 not out. Here we go....

Buy buy buy. We may still be waiting for the mega deal but the tuck-ins are everywhere

• Zuji/Travelocity bought Indian based Travelguru
• WRI went for $340mm
• TripAdvisor went further into China with Kuxun
  

Bust bust bust. The Global F'n Crisis had casualties

• Roamfree went into administration as the BOOT had to press delete on comment after comment
• Offline travel maybe dying but I had 3+3 recommendations on how it can save itself
  

Talk talk talk. The BOOT went conference crazy

• Talked EveryYou at WebInTravel - even though a back injury prevented by from actually going
• Joined the Kevin and Gene army of nodes and wrote 8 tnooz posts on subjects as varied as Augmented reality, Lonely Planet, Google, New Zealand and the Do over
• Overheard intermediaries and suppliers sharing war stories at NoVacancy
• EveryYou launched at TRAVELTech (see below)
• Another amazing week at PhoCusWright
• Spoke at Ad:Tech
  

Track track track - kept my eye on big Asian online players that are active in the market but quiet in the results arena.

• Tracking Google - broke the story first that Google meta-search was coming
  
• Tracking AsiaRooms and their TUI A&S stablemates
• Tracking Agoda, finally getting my hands on a Citi reporting estimating their turnover at $244mm for 2009 and early integration with Booking
  
• Tracking MakeMyTrip and claims they have made US$5mm off $500mm in gross sales
• Tracking Lonely Planet and their online plans
• Tracking Kayak and the private sale plans and follow up with Jetsetter CEO Drew Patterson
  

Theory theory theory

• Laid out my predications for 2010
  
• I introduced the concept of EveryYou - arguing that the future of online travel is “The development of a specific and targeted recommendation of one based on the unique combination of desires, needs and interests of each individual at any moment in time”
• Posted my thoughts on the secrets of innovation
• Mused on my 3 rules for a UGC start-up
• Pondered what next for Google in online video marketing
  

Puff Puff Puff - away from the industry I also posted

• More business traveller tips
• More seat reviews
• Introduced the SkyMall follies
• First Class is dead!

I haven't run out of things to say yet, so if you're still listening, then I will keep typing.

Tnooz: The blurring lines between transactional and non-transactional sites

My latest post for Tnooz has is live. Title of the post is "Non-transactional travel sites are chasing the online agents on unique product hunting – but can it work?". I write about how content sites are starting to negotiate directly with suppliers for unique product offerings, trying to directly challenge the major online travel agents. Mentioned in the post are Kayak Private Sale, TripAdvisor Business Listings, Voyageprive, Jetsetter, Dealbase and Totaltravel.

You can read the full post here.

3 rules for what is needed to start a consumer information or UGC based online travel start-up

User/crowd generated content available through the mega review site TripAdvisor has done a lot of things to the industry. On the consumer side they arguably changed the purchase patterns by putting user generated content at the heart of the decision making process. On the hotel marketing side they generated a whole industry of review gaming and UGC manufacture. And...on the start-up side they have convince online travel entrepreneurs that there is a business model based solely on attracting customer because of users contributing their experiences, ideas, content and more is unbeatable.

I had one such company write to me recently called cost4travel. Their plan is for consumers to share with each other their experiences on the costs of travelling to various destinations and for various activities. The idea is that consumers will share the prices they have paid for the greater good of allowing other consumers to get user supported price estimates. Allowing users to search by cost as a first point of reference rather than by destination. Interesting idea and reminiscent of Joobili's idea of coming to the search process on a time/date basis rather than destination. The challenge for cost4travel and any business that needs a scale of user content or data is how to get that scale. In the perfect world consumers add all of the data you need. That, like TripAdvsor, thousands, then tens of thousands and eventually millions of consumers will add the content for you. The challenge is how to get the consumers to volunteer information when the initial content collection is sub-scale - when a contribution by the earlier users is not going to be responded to on mass by the contribution of other consumers. Finding a way to build a business model that depends on consumers contributing the answers and information before...well...consumers have contributed the answers and information. You can call this the UGC paradox.

I have been trying to think back on the early days of TripAdvisor as surely they had this issue but I cannot recall how they managed it. Can you? Therefore I moved to looking to two non-travel examples for inspiration. From these 2 I suggest 3 rules for starting a consumer information (UGC) dependent business in online travel. First the rules and then the inspiration.

My 3 rules on things you must have to start a consumer information or UGC based online travel start-up

1. You need a source of data to kick things off. Look for and index available data first. There will be little incentive for consumers to search or contribute without a baseline of data. When looking for this data do not be afraid to use expert or professional data. In fact seek out great quality existing content and add value to it by being the best index and distribution mechanism for it;

2. Reward consumers for entering data and content. Altruism is not enough to get consumers to give you data. You need to give them an reward. For example make data contribution a "cost of entry" for consumers. You have to give something to get something. Make it so that if a consumer contributes data, then they get a better result; and

3. Syndicate, distribute and get it out there. Make it easy, very easy for consumers to send the information around, blog it, share it, tweet it, swap it....get it out there.

Inspiration number 1 - Payscale

Payscale is a Seattle based salary and compensation site. Anyone can open a profile, enter in their skills, experience, location and job title. Payscale then matches you against everyone else in the Payscale universe of contributors and returns salary and compensation comparison information. Another UGC play that requires scale. It can only provide an information seeker with a valuable experience if there are millions of consumers contributing their skills, job descriptions and salary information. Scale they have. In Oct 2008 they reported 15 million profiles. But at the time of launch they probably only had a few hundred profiles (assuming they beta-launched with info input by friends, family and founders). Thus they kicked off the business and populated their database with statistical data from a variety of external (read non user generated) sources including government sources. Plus before you could access the data they had collected from others, you had to submit your own data. Means there was enough initial data to provide a answers to early customers and those customers had to submit more data. We learn from this that you need to collect some starting point data to kick of the business and will be more success if you reward consumers for entering data (in this case by making it a cost of getting a response).

Inspiration number 2 - YouTube

YouTube is the biggest UGC site on the web. Without user generated videos YouTube is dead. The purist YouTube UGC argument is that YouTube over came the UGC paradox through timing in technology and social desire. That is launched itself at exactly the right time - when the desire for consumer sharing of videos matched the technology capability to shoot and upload in moments. However the real truth (OK arguable truth) is that what made YouTube popular enough to attract scale in UGC videos was not UGC videos. Rather it was copyrighted material. In particular consumers uploading and then sending to each other copyrighted material from Viacom (Daily Show, Colbert Report, MTV videos) and NBC Universal (Saturday Night Live). Before videos like Dancing Matt and LonelyGirl15, the huge YouTube hits were videos like SNL's Cronic of Narnia (no longer avail on YouTube). YouTube was built on the back of sharing professionally produced copyright material not UGC. Don't believe me? Then think back to the first time you were sent a YouTube video. I'm betting it was a clip from a TV or a music video. Still don't believe me? Then look at the list of top watch videos of all time. Seven of the top eleven are music videos or clips. YouTube's early value was in being a repository and distribution means for non-UGC. The learning from this is don't discount "expert" or professional data. If fact you may want to encourage it. Secondly we learn - make it easy, very easy - for consumers to send it around, blog it, share it, tweet it, swap it....get it out there.

So from YouTube and Payscale I have developed my three rules for launching UGC based start-ups. There will be more rules for making it a success but these are my view on what you need to get started.

Anyone one out there remember the early days of TripAdvisor well enough to add to the list of rules? More ideas in the comments.

thanks to richbeechina for the crow shot

Kuxun acquisition takes TripAdvisor further into China

Expedia's TripAdvisor is to buy Chinese meta-search company Kuxun (at least I think it is a meta-search company) (according to Dow Jones via Hotelmarketing.com). TripAdvior CEO Steve Kaufer would not give away how much was paid but is quoted in the article as saying he has US$50mm to invest in China in 2010 and 2011 but this includes setting up the local version of TripAdvisor Daodao.com. Also said he plans to double the number of staff in China from 80 to 160. My guess (no basis just a hunch) is Kuxun will be used as the tech behind Daodao with Kuxun's brand to disappear soon after the deal.

In case you are wondering about meanings. I am reliably informed that Kuxun means Cool Information or Smart Information and Daodao means To Reach, To Arrive.

Her is my updated list of TripAdvisor Acquisitions in the last few years:

• Kuxun;
  
• Flipkey
  
• Airfarewatchdog.com
• OneTime.com
• Virtual Tourist
• HolidayWatchdog
  
• smartertravel.com
• bookingbuddy.com;
• TravelPod.com;
• Travel-Library.com;
• SeatGuru.com; and
• Cruisecritic.com.

I always close these stories with the reminder that Expedia owns TripAdvisor as you'd be surprised how much search traffic I get asking the question "who owns TripAdvisor"

801 not out

Another 100 posts are live on the InterTubes. Time again for my regular "not out series" recap where I go through the last 100 posts and remind you of the themes that have been dominating the blog. I started almost three years ago with 101 not out and continued with 201, 301, 401, 501. 601, and 701 not out. This comes at a time that the BOOT passed the 100k visitor mark.

Two new segments for the Blog

• Seat Reviews including Qantas Economy, Qantas Premium Economy, JAL Business, BA Business, Singapore Raffles and United Business ; and
  
• Business traveller tips - what to pack, what to wear and getting through security.

Meta search action a-plenty which I tried to summarise in my post "Meta-search vs Online Travel Agents: the three main differences and why they matter"

• TripAdvisor launching air meta-search and received criticism (including from me) for allowing too many reviews from non-travellers
  
• Travelzoo launching Fly.com
• Kayak branching into content and review meta-search through expanded Travelpost
• Yahoo! went the other way and euthenased FareChase
• Cheapflights launched in Australia with a sub-par product
• Car meta-search company Oodles topped the car traffic numbers in Australia
• Sidestep founders came back with the oddly named Voyij
  

While also having time for Travel Discovery and Inspiration sites such as:

• event based search site Joobili
• the high profile Triporati
• data loving Tripbase

...and we found out how much Expedia paid for VirtualTourist and OneTime

BOOT interview mania with start ups and industry shakers

• Alfonso Castellano of TripSay (part 1 and 2)
• AsiaRoom came out of the closet, launched direct contracting and the BOOT found out more about them and their TUI ODS stable-mates including revenue numbers
  
• Jim Hornthal of Triporati
• Yen Lee of Uptake
• Reuven Levitt of Tripbase (part 1 and 2)
• Steve Hafner of Kayak
  

oh...and...a plane actually landed on water

Still trying to convince offline travel media that Expedia own's TripAdvisor

Below is an extract of the TravelToday daily PDF published by the Australian version of TravelWeekly (owned by Reed Business).

Expedia coup
Expedia has partnered with SeatGuru to integrate user reviews of airplane seats [sic] into the seat maps for flights sold on Expedia.com.

In case you (like TravelWeekly) have missed the last 5 years of the online travel industry, Expedia owns TripAdvisor and in May 2007 TripAdvisor bought SeatGuru.

What next TravelWeekly? Amazing news that Qantas has extended its preferred supplier relationship with Qantas Holidays. Industry shaking news that W and Sheraton hotels have agreed to exchange loyalty club points. Hold the front page news that Avis and Budget are using the same fuel supplier.

Rather than using the headline "Expedia coup", it would be more appropriate to usethe phrase "People at Expedia are returning each other's calls". But that would hardly make for an interesting headline.

PS - can only find the article in PDF form, let me know if you see it online.

TripAdvisor needs to move to a "no stay, no say" approach to reviews to protect brand and online reviews generally

Expedia's TripAdvisor is claiming more than 20 million reviews on their site. In addition they have been on a steady and apparently unstoppable campaign to buy niche review sites in areas such as Cruise, holidays, airline seats and vacation rental. You'll find the latest list of everything they have bought here. As a result (and as predicted here) they have morphed from a destination site to an online advertising network and meta-search company called (unsurprisingly) the TripAdvisor Media Network.

While that has been going on in the background, the front end of TripAdvisor looks like an Onlnie Travel Agency site with tabbed header, a search widget middle left, deals and promos in the the C column and content and search help below the fold. Clearly a move to compete directly with the OTAs in drawing in consumer loyalty and repeat business.

Despite all the changes, the heart of TripAdvisor is the reviews. The dedication of the user base to write detailed, descriptive, useful and Google friendly content to attract lookers and bookers. This all ties to the baseline of the TripAdvisor band and their tag line - "get advice from real travellers". Unfortunately stories are coming out about possible flaws in TripAdvisor's mechanism for ensuring that reviews are only written by "real travellers".

Just recently the Times in the UK ran a piece called "Who's really writing the reviews on TripAdvisor". The story quoted one hotelier as saying "the system is laughably easy to manipulate....I was even approached by PR first offering to write my reviews for me." Newsweek also covered the story in their article "TripAdvsor tries to respond to fake hotel reviews". In that story journalist Sean O'Neil noted that he did not understand why "TripAdvsor didn't duplicate Amazons "Real Name" feature, which offers third-party verification that a reviewer is the person he or she claims to be".

The question is not whether or not their are fake reviews on TripAdvisor - clearly there are. The question is how many are there and what influence do they have in hotel rankings, especially in smaller destinations. Consumer Travel uber Blogger Chris Elliott put the question best in his story "Does TripAdvisor hotel manipulation scandal render the site completely useless".

The official word from TripAdvisor (care of Elliott's post) is that they have a zero tolerance for fake reviews (they call it fraud) and a three methods for policing this policy. Quote -

"1. Every review is screened prior to posting and a team of quality assurance specialists investigate suspicious reviews

2. Proprietary automated tools help identify attempts to subvert the system

3. Our large and passionate community of more than 25 million monthly visitors help screen our content and report suspicious activity"

An example of this approach can be seen on the entertaining TripAdvisor We're Not Making This Up Blog (in the post called "Exactly") where an irate hotel DOS is complaining that all of the reviews he is writing for his own hotel are being pulled down.

What is missing is independent confirmation that the customer actually stayed in the hotel. My view is that these three steps are not enough. Technology and human review will simply not be enough to screen out the "gamers". The only way to be truly clear of fraud is for TripAdvisor to move to a "no stay, no say" rule. A means of verifying that the person writing the review has stayed at the hotel. This could be achieved though a combination of approaches such as a feature like the Amazon Real Name service, using the enormous amounts of transaction and searching data that the Expedia Inc empire collects, drawing on information from advertising partners and other verification mechanisms.

The counter view is that this would be too hard for TripAdvisor as they do not do any of the bookings, that is left to the advertiser. While there is some truth to that argument, between the data collected by TripAdvisor on click behaviour, information provided by advertisers and information from what must be a massive Expedia Inc privacy killing data warehouse, there is (I am sure) more than enough data available to TripAdvisor to verify. I would not be cheap or easy to do, but in my opinion necessary

What do you think - should TripAdvisor move to a "no stay, no say" rule or is the fraud so small that it doesn't need to?

If you are looking for more commentary on this story also check out

• Yeoh Siew Hoon's post "the ugly face of social media"
• Darren Cronian's post "Ten summer travel tips from bloggers" which includes the tips "You’ll find good reviews and bad reviews for nearly every destination" and "Treat all online travel reviews like mildly entertaining fiction."
• Dennis Schaal "The truth About TripAdvisor and Professional Hotel Reviews"
• Martin Kelly at TravelTrends with a personal experience called "TripAdvisor Cleans out Reviews for Fiji Resort"
  

As always I close with confirmation that Expedia owns TripAdvisor. Other than searches for my name, Google searches for "who owns TripAdvisor" is my number one source of search traffic.