Tripadvisor Launches Listing Service for Hotels

TripAdvisor, the hotel review site that once was a thorn in the side to most hoteliers, has launched a service that lets hotels pay to post their contact information and direct links to their websites.

The business-listings service is the culmination of a series of recent efforts by TripAdvisor to work with hoteliers who want to monitor the hotel review site and take advantage of opportunities to do business with the 25 million people who visit TripAdvisor each month.

“I think five years ago, probably most hoteliers wished that we would go away,” said Nathan Clapton, vice president of partnerships for TripAdvisor. “I think maybe a couple of years ago they thought it isn’t going away and we have to accept it.

“What we have seen more recently, particularly during 2009, is that hoteliers are proactively marketing themselves through TripAdvisor and thinking about what more they can do through TripAdvisor and social media.”

With the new service, hoteliers pay an annual fee based on the size of their hotel to have their contact information and a link to their website posted with reviews about the hotel. It’s a flat fee, meaning hotels do not have to pay commissions for bookings that might come through a link from TripAdvisor.

Clapton said the service is a culmination of efforts the company has made over the past year to aid hoteliers.

These efforts include an email service that lets hoteliers sign up to be notified when new reviews are posted and a dashboard that shows how the reviews on their hotel are trending. The two services are free and are being used by some 100,000 hotels, Clapton said.