Expedia Inc.'s TripAdvisor Media Network took several steps to increase the reach of its advertising business.
In one of the initiatives, TripAdvisor launched two tools to enable independent properties to leverage user-generated hotel reviews.
Within a couple of weeks of its mid-November introduction, about 500 properties installed the TripAdvisor recent-review widget. The tool places a TripAdvisor box on the property's home page with a traveler rating and snippets of reviews about the property.
This review widget enables the hotels to increase look-to-book conversion, site traffic and the dollar amount booked, according to TripAdvisor. And it also increases the clout of TripAdvisor's advertisers, because when visitors to the hotel website click on a review to read its entirety, they navigate in a new window to the hotel's page on TripAdvisor.com.
About 1,000 properties, meanwhile, had installed a second product, a TripAdvisor "badge," on their sites. Smaller than the recent-review boxes, the badge simply states whether the property is recommended, rated or featured on TripAdvisor, depending on the property's approval rating. Like the recent-review tool, consumers who click on the badge navigate to TripAdvisor.
For larger players like Lastminute.com, TUI and Hayes and Jarvis, TripAdvisor has implemented user reviews that keep consumers on the client sites, said Nathan Clapton, TripAdvisor's brand distribution director.
In the second initiative, the BookingBuddy brand of Smarter Travel Media, a subsidiary of TripAdvisor, launched the BookingBuddy Deals Network, vastly increasing the reach of its travel-promotion advertising.
Previously, BookingBuddy's cost-per-click deal advertising for things like a three-night vacation package in Boston or an all-inclusive resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica, appeared on the BookingBuddy.com site.
But with the launch of the Deals Network, these text ads now appear across the TripAdvisor subsidiaries, including TripAdvisor, SmarterTravel, Cruise Critic, VirtualTourist, BookingBuddy and others. Launch advertising partners included Expedia units such as Hotwire and Expedia.com but also Priceline, CheapCaribbean.com and Cheapoair.com.
David Krauter, senior director of product for Smarter Travel Media, said the BookingBuddy Deals Network increased the reach of the network's advertising to about 23 million consumers.
The network also enables advertisers to better target their promotions.
For example, the network's Top Deals for Dec. 3 on TripAdvisor includes several Boston promotions on a page full of Boston hotel deals.