5 ms·

Inside the Mad, Mad World of TripAdvisor

112 points by khc 12y ago

jpatokal 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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?
    - cjensen 12y ago
      WikiVoyage forked to join the Wikimedia family of sites after WT's owner failed to keep its infrastructure up to date (30 seconds to make commit an edit). That the owners of WikiTravel (Internet Brands) literally sued contributors for this was less than helpful to WT's continued existence. Disclosure: I was potentially an "unnamed co-conspirator" in the lawsuit.
    - jpatokal 12y ago
      This blog post of mine summarizes some of the key differences: http://gyrovague.com/2013/01/14/free-travel-guide-wikivoyage-comes-out-of-beta-and-is-already-kicking-ass/ http://gyrovague.com/2013/01/14/free-travel-guide-wikivoyage... And this is my version of how the split came to be: http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-abandon-internet-brands-join-up-with-wikipedia/ http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-abandon-i...
      - caminante 12y ago
        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 12y ago
        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
- tnuc 12y ago
  >I continue to believe that Wikivoyage, the CC-licensed and Wikimedia-hosted fork of Wikitravel, holds great promise... I can't believe in Wikivoyage at all. Wikitravel has been flawed from the outset and forking into wikivoyage has succeeded in making two bad sites. Trying to apply travel to the (current) wiki model is not going to work. >...you'd need to build a hybrid -- a Wiki for factual info, and unlimited personal reviews -- to get the best of both worlds. Tripadvisor does pretty much what you are describing, with a strong emphasis on selling you a hotel room, tour or whatnot. And it is a little light on factual information and heavy on fake opinion. Time for someone to build something better.
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    No, Tripadvisor's all about reviews of points of interest (hotels, restaurants, etc), with a messy jungle of forums bolted onto the side. It's near-useless for the context that guidebooks (and Wikivoyage) excel at: how to get there, a place's history, safety advice, etc.
- ape4 12y ago
  On my last trip I used Wikipedia (not wikitravel) to find which airlines serviced an certain airport.
- nnain 12y ago
  Interesting. The answer here gives a good idea about WikiTravel and WikiVoyage - www.quora.com/How-is-Wikivoyage-different-from-Wikitravel I will move to WikiVoyage now, but I have to say -- WikiTravel still benefits from a better (and a more famous) name. Many people won't even get to know this difference.
- bambax 12y ago
  I contribute occasionally to Trip Advisor but realize that I don't know who owns my reviews: them or me? Could I export my reviews from there and put them elsewhere if I wanted to?
  - pricechild 12y ago
    http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/terms.html http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/terms.html says "All contents of this Website are: ©2015 TripAdvisor LLC. All rights reserved." but I can't immediately find where users grant this.
    - pricechild 12y ago
      Ah nevermind here we go, fun times: > you grant TripAdvisor and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, transferable, irrevocable and fully sublicensable right to (a) use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, distribute, publish, create derivative works from and publicly display and perform such Submissions throughout the world in any media, now known or hereafter devised, for any purpose > If it is determined that you retain moral rights (including rights of attribution or integrity) in the Content, you hereby declare that (a) you do not require that any personally identifying information be used in connection with the Content, or any derivative works of or upgrades or updates thereto; (b) you have no objection to the publication, use, modification, deletion and exploitation of the Content by TripAdvisor or its licensees, successors and assigns; (c) you forever waive and agree not to claim or assert any entitlement to any and all moral rights of an author in any of the Content; and (d) you forever release TripAdvisor, and its licensees, successors and assigns, from any claims that you could otherwise assert against TripAdvisor by virtue of any such moral rights.
      - bambax 12y ago
        Wow. Thanks. It's very possible that these clauses are illegal in many countries, but nonetheless it's good to know, and chilling.
        12y ago
jghn 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
  - jghn 12y ago
    Very interesting, thanks.
  - eropple 12y ago
    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.
caminante 12y ago
I found the research study interesting -- https://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-16421.html https://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/report... 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
pbreit 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    Do hotels have a way of attributing revenue to TripAdvisor?
    - khc 12y ago
      you can make bookings through tripadvisor
      - walterbell 12y ago
        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.
bambax 12y ago
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 12y ago
  http://www.tripadvisor.com/BusinessListings-g1-World.html http://www.tripadvisor.com/BusinessListings-g1-World.html
gasull 12y ago
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.

112 points by khc 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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?
  - cjensen 12y ago
    WikiVoyage forked to join the Wikimedia family of sites after WT's owner failed to keep its infrastructure up to date (30 seconds to make commit an edit). That the owners of WikiTravel (Internet Brands) literally sued contributors for this was less than helpful to WT's continued existence. Disclosure: I was potentially an "unnamed co-conspirator" in the lawsuit.
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    This blog post of mine summarizes some of the key differences: http://gyrovague.com/2013/01/14/free-travel-guide-wikivoyage-comes-out-of-beta-and-is-already-kicking-ass/ http://gyrovague.com/2013/01/14/free-travel-guide-wikivoyage... And this is my version of how the split came to be: http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-abandon-internet-brands-join-up-with-wikipedia/ http://gyrovague.com/2012/07/12/wikitravel-editors-abandon-i...
    - caminante 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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
tnuc 12y ago
>I continue to believe that Wikivoyage, the CC-licensed and Wikimedia-hosted fork of Wikitravel, holds great promise... I can't believe in Wikivoyage at all. Wikitravel has been flawed from the outset and forking into wikivoyage has succeeded in making two bad sites. Trying to apply travel to the (current) wiki model is not going to work. >...you'd need to build a hybrid -- a Wiki for factual info, and unlimited personal reviews -- to get the best of both worlds. Tripadvisor does pretty much what you are describing, with a strong emphasis on selling you a hotel room, tour or whatnot. And it is a little light on factual information and heavy on fake opinion. Time for someone to build something better.
- jpatokal 12y ago
  No, Tripadvisor's all about reviews of points of interest (hotels, restaurants, etc), with a messy jungle of forums bolted onto the side. It's near-useless for the context that guidebooks (and Wikivoyage) excel at: how to get there, a place's history, safety advice, etc.
ape4 12y ago
On my last trip I used Wikipedia (not wikitravel) to find which airlines serviced an certain airport.
nnain 12y ago
Interesting. The answer here gives a good idea about WikiTravel and WikiVoyage - www.quora.com/How-is-Wikivoyage-different-from-Wikitravel I will move to WikiVoyage now, but I have to say -- WikiTravel still benefits from a better (and a more famous) name. Many people won't even get to know this difference.
bambax 12y ago
I contribute occasionally to Trip Advisor but realize that I don't know who owns my reviews: them or me? Could I export my reviews from there and put them elsewhere if I wanted to?
- pricechild 12y ago
  http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/terms.html http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/terms.html says "All contents of this Website are: ©2015 TripAdvisor LLC. All rights reserved." but I can't immediately find where users grant this.
  - pricechild 12y ago
    Ah nevermind here we go, fun times: > you grant TripAdvisor and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, transferable, irrevocable and fully sublicensable right to (a) use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, distribute, publish, create derivative works from and publicly display and perform such Submissions throughout the world in any media, now known or hereafter devised, for any purpose > If it is determined that you retain moral rights (including rights of attribution or integrity) in the Content, you hereby declare that (a) you do not require that any personally identifying information be used in connection with the Content, or any derivative works of or upgrades or updates thereto; (b) you have no objection to the publication, use, modification, deletion and exploitation of the Content by TripAdvisor or its licensees, successors and assigns; (c) you forever waive and agree not to claim or assert any entitlement to any and all moral rights of an author in any of the Content; and (d) you forever release TripAdvisor, and its licensees, successors and assigns, from any claims that you could otherwise assert against TripAdvisor by virtue of any such moral rights.
    - bambax 12y ago
      Wow. Thanks. It's very possible that these clauses are illegal in many countries, but nonetheless it's good to know, and chilling.
      - 12y ago

jghn 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.
- jghn 12y ago
  Very interesting, thanks.
- eropple 12y ago
  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.

caminante 12y ago

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

pbreit 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  Do hotels have a way of attributing revenue to TripAdvisor?
  - khc 12y ago
    you can make bookings through tripadvisor
    - walterbell 12y ago
      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.

bambax 12y ago

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 12y ago
http://www.tripadvisor.com/BusinessListings-g1-World.html http://www.tripadvisor.com/BusinessListings-g1-World.html

gasull 12y ago

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.