Since February 2000, TripAdvisor has grown at an astonishing rate. Now, the world’s largest travel site brings in over 170 million reviews related to hotels, vacation rentals, attractions and restaurants. Averaging nearly 280 million unique visitors each month, it’s safe to say a brand’s presence on the site is comparable to the importance of the way you dress for a job interview.
A study of an online panel totalling 2 million people was completed by comScore for TripAdvisor. This case study revealed that 50% of travelers who book online visited TripAdvisor during their online journey. With this size segment of data, there is no argument that TripAdvisor plays a major role in the guest’s decision about where to stay. As a brand, what strategies are there to increase and sustain your presence on the site?
Increasing Your TripAdvisor Ranking
Brands have tried increasing reviews on TripAdvisor after seeing the revenue generator it has become, but few have increased positive reviews and sustained them. There are multiple platforms that increase reviews through partnering with TripAdvisor, but because both negative and positive reviews are the result, it still keeps brands stationary in placement. The algorithm is Recency, Frequency and Quality. We do not know the weight of each of these but do know, through analyzing client data, that quality outweighs frequency.
Company A has 3,412 5-star reviews and Company B has 2,586, putting Company A with over 800 more 5-star reviews than their competitor. Naturally, you would think Company A would rank well above Company B on TripAdvisor. The fact is that company Company B ranks above Company A, even with significantly fewer 5-star reviews.
We began to analyze the data further to see why this was happening. We found that Company A has more 4-star reviews than Company B. Company A had dominated the 5-star review sector for so long and had a significant amount more of positive reviews with over 900 more 4-star reviews, so the higher ranking for Company B was still not making sense.
After more in depth research, we found, with all reviews considered, Company B was more likely to give a 5-star experience than any other experience and Company A, while likely to give a 5-star experience, also had a tendency to give 3-star and 4-star experiences.
Fixing This Problem And Sustaining Higher Rankings On TripAdvisor
We found a way to use technology to turn this data into action and help Company A continue to increase their 5-star reviews while decreasing their 3-star and 4-star reviews, ultimately increasing their TripAdvisor ranking.
If ranking higher on TripAdvisor can add value to your business, schedule a demo of our Guest Experience Manager to learn more about our strategy.
Click here to schedule a demo to start increasing your TripAdvisor rankings!
