TripAdvisor celebrates 15 this year and here a selection of senior TripAdvisor executives give for their views on how travel has changed in those years, what impact the website has had on the way we plan a trip, and what the future of travel might look like fifteen years from now.
How has the way we travel changed in the last 15 years?
Martin Vernon-Roe, VP Ad Sales, points out that travel has become accessible to more of the world’s population than ever before, “In the last 15 years we’ve seen the travel industry became a truly global industry for the first time. In 2000, there were 677 million international tourist arrivals. By 2012 that number had grown to over 1 billion.”
For, Luc Levesque, VP SEO, this is in part down to how much information we now have at our fingertips, “The dramatic expansion of all types of travel information available online has been a game changer for travel. I remember travelling in 1999 with a guidebook that had outdated, hand drawn maps. Today, I can get an accurate satellite map of my trip marked up with the travel sites I want to visit and my location shown in real-time. That is an incredible change.”
According to Adam Medros, SVP of Global Product, the biggest change has been the shift to mobile, “15 years ago the hardest part of travel wasn’t the journey, it was the planning. Figuring out where to go, where to stay, consulting countless guides and printed maps, even buying tickets. Now all of that can be done on your mobile phone. Suddenly, planning a trip has become the easy part.”
Brian Schmidt, VP of Global Sales, agrees, “There is no doubt the smartphone has revolutionised travel. You no longer need to carry around a massive guidebook or rely on outdated information to make decisions on the go.”
And yet, before the launch of smartphones, it was not a shift everyone saw coming, as Adam Medros recalls, “I remember during the early years of TripAdvisor we used to joke about why anyone would read reviews from a flipphone. Then the iPhone launched, and it completely changed the way we looked at mobile. In a few years, our mobile efforts went from being a sideshow to being the catalyst for many of our biggest innovations – from Near Me Now to Instant Booking.”
Overall, Heather Leisman, VP for Industry Marketing, sums up how our travel habits have changed, “Travelers today are better informed, more agile and more in control than they have ever been.”
What impact has TripAdvisor had on the industry during that time?
TripAdvisor CEO, Steve Kaufer, believes that the site’s biggest impact has been to level the playing field in the hospitality sector, “TripAdvisor has been a wonderfully democratic force for change. The transparency of having millions of reviews written by travelers means great products and services can rise over the marketing budgets that push touched up photos.”
For Adam Medros, the growth of TripAdvisor is a key example of how the internet can bring together a global community, “I think at its heart the internet was built around the concept of user-generated content – information being free and at your fingertrips. At TripAdvisor, we just embraced that philosophy and gave a voice and a platform to the wisdom of the crowds.”
And, he argues, it hasn’t just changed consumer habits. It has changed business habits too, “Ultimately, I think one of the biggest impacts TripAdvisor has had is in rewarding hospitality businesses that focus on hospitality.”
Lily Cheng, President of TripAdvisor APAC, agrees “TripAdvisor has given travellers a collective voice to share what they love and what they don’t. This has made the travel industry more meritocratic because businesses, big or small, have a chance to shine if they can show they really care about their customers.”
Brian Schmidt sums up the value of the site, “TripAdvisor has filled a real need in the marketplace for customer reviews, and as those reviews and content have grown, this platform has become even more meaningful. As we layer on new tools – such as price comparison and booking capability – we are centralizing the trip planning process, making it easier for consumers.”
How might our travel habits change in the next 15 years?
Adam Medros believes personalisation will play a key role in how we travel, “I think potential for personalised features that leverage a mass of data to give tailored results is huge. If it is smartly done and intuitive, it will feel less like a service and more like a travel companion.”
He also believes innovation will be driven by our increasing reliance on wearable technology, “Wearable technology will become a big part of how we travel in future. We won’t walk around staring at our phones following a map. We will walk around with our heads up, and our devices will help us experience what is around us rather than distracting us from it.”
Brian Schmidt agrees, “I think wearable technology has the potential to change travel. Most of what we do now with devices is ‘active’ in the sense that you still need to get out your phone, you still need to take a moment to capture a photo. But think about a world where everything is captured ‘passively’ – there are challenges involved in that, from a privacy and date point of view, but also there is great potential to guide, share and recollect what we experience.”
Ravi Mehta, VP of Consumer Product, also thinks augmented reality will offer inherent benefits when travelling, “I am fascinated by what augmented reality could offer. The beauty of augmented reality is that it gives a user added context. When you travel, when you explore somewhere new, that is often when you have the least amount of context about what you are experiencing. But what if technology could give you real time annotations of the things you are looking at, or translations of local signs into your native language, or notifications of nearby events – that is where augmented reality could transform the experience of travelling.”
Finally, looking back over the last 15 years, what business decision most stands out to Steve Kaufer, CEO?
“The feature I am most proud of is the ‘write a review’ button we added to the site. Little did we know at the time what a huge decision that would turn out to be.”
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