If you’ve been living under a rock this past week or two you might have just missed TripAdvisor’s unveiling of its new site and mobile experience. The debut of Travel Feed, which will roll out later this year, is more or less TripAdvisor’s move into the social media world – These days, there’s a social media app for everything, the world has become more social, so naturally, TripAdvisor has made one for travel.
The proposed new website/app proposes to be the most personalized and connected travel community, that will inspire and empower individuals with ‘social assistive tools’ to plan and book better with relevant advice and information from friends and experts they trust. Users will no longer use the original platform for completing tasks such as finding a hotel but instead users can follow social recommendations from friends, influencers, bloggers and publishers to not only plan their own trips, but users will now also be able to book hotels, make dining reservations, sign up for tours and activities on the site or through the app. Not only that but during a trip, users’ personalized travel feed will notify them when they pass by a restaurant or point of interest that one of their friends has reviewed on TripAdvisor. And of course, users can also leave their own tips and reviews, post-trip.
As Skift put it, basically, TripAdvisor are “… trying to enmesh itself in everything from travel inspiration to booking, both pre-trip and during the journey, as well as storytelling Snapchat- and Instagram-style“.
It sounds exciting but will it be successful? Many travel brands — particularly social travel start-ups — have tried and failed to become the Facebook of travel. And there are already many for and against arguments over TripAdvisor’s redesign. One on hand, while the idea makes sense, it remains to be seen how successful TripAdvisor will be in convincing its global users that there’s a need for them to create yet another social media profile on top of their Facebook, Instagram, and other social media accounts. But on the other hand, with the new Travel Feed, everything will now be in one convenient location – no more Googling 10 different websites when planning and booking travel, and, more importantly, it will be personalized.
