How influential is TripAdvisor on the global travel economy?

A new study has revealed that the global travel economy has seen it’s eighth consecutive year of growth, reaching $7.08 trillion AUD and overtaking global GDP.

The study, Sizing the Worldwide Travel Economy, was carried out by Oxford Economics in partnership with TripAdvisor and examined the size of the global travel economy and TripAdvisor’s contributions to it.

By comparing the world economic growth data with TripAdvisor’s own trends, the study was also able to show that TripAdvisor had an enormous estimated influence of $731 billion in 2017 alone and influenced spending worth $15.7 billion in Australia alone.

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Globally, the popular travel site influenced more than 433 million trips last year, with 4.6 million of those in Australia.

Which essentially mean TripAdvisor’s influence contributed to more than 10 per cent of total spending in 2017.

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These findings throw into question the influence of online review sites on the travel economy, and the repercussions of this influence.

The study also found that roughly half of all international trips are to European destinations, while destinations in the Asia-Pacific region are taking a greater share of travel with a growth of 130 per cent in the last 10 years.

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Additionally, nearly one in 10 employees globally are supported by tourism activity.

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To reach a high degree of confidence in their findings, Oxford Economics took TripAdvisor user trends data going back through 2004 and married them together with data from their Global Travel Service database which draws on raw data from them together with data from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), as well as national and regional statistical agencies.

The result is one of the largest, most comprehensive views of the size and scope of the global tourism economy performed to date, along with deep insight into TripAdvisor’s own impact on the industry.

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

Latest comments

SozerKeyse says:
May 11, 2018 at 6:02 pm
I dunno, I feel like if I go on any of these reviews sites and just read five or six reviews, I can tell if the place is worth a visit or not. Dodgy reviews are so obvious.
Plus, what happens when a s*** hotel pays for a bunch of good reviews and their rating jumps up and everyone goes there? It then gets 2000 crap reviews and drops back down. It doesn’t work in the long run, prob better for the owners to just fix their problems and get good real reviews.
*shrug*
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John McDonald says:
May 11, 2018 at 2:43 pm
trip advisor is so dodgy. We get emails every week from someone in India saying for a small amount we can have 1000 +ve comments on trip advisor & 1000 -ve comments for the opposition. This can never ever be stopped.
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sting says:
May 11, 2018 at 12:36 pm
….impressive.. tripadvisor of course has got influence somehow… but remember this is a tripadvisor sponsored study… so some the figures may be quite inflated to make tripadvisor look good… it is not a barometer of its success… if you check it’s corporate hotel listing program, well everyone knows it’s a dud… so there..
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