TripAdvisor’s ‘big shift’ to one click

TripAdvisor has rolled out instant book technology to the Australian marketplace last month, using consumer trust in their brand to leverage transactions and keep users on page.

“It’s a big shift – we’ve always been known for research and planning and reviews, 200 added every minute” TripAdvisor Vice President Global Sales Brian Schmidt said.

Consumers want a frictionless booking process with the best price point, and the Instant Book add-on will provide this, Schmidt told Travel Weekly.

“I think the future of travel is providing as much utility to the user on as many aspects of their trip as seamlessly and simply as possible.”

Increasing mobile reliance makes an instant book function critical, TripAdvisor said.

“How do you inspire someone to go somewhere, how do you help them actually book the flight or the hotel and how do you help them have the best stay possible?”

TripAdvisor’s end goal is to guide and surface opportunities that travellers may not know about with simple transactions to finish the deal.

“Australia is a market where we’ve tried to be really innovative with our instant booking. The Australian audience are some of the most engaged travellers,” Schmidt said.

“How do we make TripAdvisor as useful to travellers as much as possible? That’s our guiding spirit.”

The travel platform is assessing partnerships with service providers, including uber, where the car booking app can be embedded in TripAdvisor’s functionality.

This comes off the back of TripAdvisor’s recent acquisition of Australian restaurant booking platform Dimmi to enhance its direct booking capability.

“We continue to evolve where you want to go including where you want to eat,” Schmidt said.

The focus for TripAdvisor going forward is product iteration and improvement in processes.

“The internet world is fluid. We tend to focus more to solve the needs of our users.”

Increasingly, business is operating in an app-centric world and Tripadvisor is catering to the smartphone user with immediacy.

But it shouldn’t detract from the central business proposition of unbiased reviews, Schmidt said.

“If we don’t do that we lose our value proposition to our users, so we take it really seriously.”

Business owners are encouraged to enter into a dialogue with consumer reviews.

“We have a strong separation between the commercial and the review site of the business,” Schmidt said.

TripAdvisor insists that commercial partners do not have influence over the reviews.

Schmidt said that the movement toward mobile will drive innovation.

“What we all want as users are photos and experiences that are being shared.”

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

Brian Schmidt online tripadvisor