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TripAdvisor Business Listing – not for everyone
In order to evaluate the benefits of using the TripAdvisor’s new Business Listing feature, Spanish web marketing company Mirai Espana asked three of their clients from Madrid to share their data. The result: ROI varied greatly among the three hotels.
Traffic: Expectations were high; after all it is a leading site in the travel industry and an assumption it should largely contribute to the whole traffic pie was reasonable. To Mirai’s surprise it was not the case – TripAdvisor represented less than 1% of total traffic for all three hotels. So if you count on a huge boost of the site traffic, it is just not going to happen.
Conversion: The most appropriate way of measuring traffic quality is via the so called conversion rate (#of reservations / traffic). In other words, the highest conversion rate the better the quality of the traffic. Only in Hotel #1 conversion rate from TripAdvisor is significantly higher than from other sources (caused by high user rating). In general, conversion rate is very much similar across all channels. That busts another myth of highly qualified traffic from TripAdvisor. The truth is that it is not any better or worse than any other source unless you rank flawlessly on user reviews.
ROI: So the traffic is not as expected, neither is conversion rate but the question remains, does it pay off to buy a Business Listing on TripAdvisor? Let’s take a closer look at the cost and benefits issue. Let’s compare Return of Investment (ROI) of TripAdvisor with other channels like Expedia, Booking, Venere or Paid Search.
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