Posts tagged "ugc"
12 May 2013

  • Google tests hotel search campaign with lots of photos

    Digital

    Google is making your quest to find a hotel so much more picturesque. In a typical Google user-experience experiment, a subset of users may enter “Dallas hotels,” or perhaps substitute another city, in the Google search box or Chrome browser, and they will be able to view a horizontal collection of hotel photos (see above) [...]

08 May 2013

  • Interview: HotelTonight’s CEO on user photos, copycats and Priceline

    Digital

    Sam Shank, co-founder and CEO of same-day booking app HotelTonight, knows more than a little about user-generated content since he signed-on a decade ago to head up hotel-review site TravelPost, and was still around when it was sold to SideStep. HotelTonight today updated its iOS app to include a “Snap Your Stay” feature, enabling hotel [...]

07 May 2013
06 May 2013

  • Yelp has multiple and mounting challenges on its plate

    Digital

    I believe that despite Yelp’s recent success, there can only be two possible endgames for the San Francisco-based company — it will either get marginalized into obscurity by Facebook and Google, or it will be bought out by a larger company, such as Yahoo. Meanwhile, Yelp introduced display ads in France and Spain during the [...]

23 Apr 2013

  • TripAdvisor launches positive reviews service for hotels

    Digital

    TripAdvisor debuted a new review widget for hotel, restaurant, and tours and activities sites, punctuating TripAdvisor’s years-in-the-making evolution from impartial provider of user-generated reviews to — increasingly — hotel marketer. Yes, TripAdvisor still provides guest-written reviews, warts and all, but with the new Rave Review widget, certain “qualified websites” can showcase on their own sites [...]

30 Mar 2013

  • TripAdvisor users pick San Juan Island in Washington over Hawaiian islands

    Digital

    Hawaii’s islands are not the top choice of travelers using TripAdvisor.com. Not quite sure how this happened, but Kauai (No. 2), Maui (No. 5) and Hawaii island (No. 8) all were soundly beaten by Washington state’s San Juan Island in the TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice polling for [top 10 islands in the U.S.] 2013. San Juan, [...]

26 Mar 2013

  • TripAdvisor’s CEO dumps on Expedia reviews and worries about Apple

    Digital

    The Harbus: Who’s your biggest competitor? What’s your strategy for gaining market share? TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer: TripAdvisor is in a number of different verticals: hotels, flights, vacation rentals, etc. We make almost all our money in the hotel vertical. I know lots of people who rely on Yelp for local and TripAdvisor for trips, [...]

14 Mar 2013

  • Why verified hotel reviews won’t take off

    Digital

    As important as online reviews are to the success of your hotel today, I have a feeling we’re just at the tip of the iceberg. I will contend the average consumer does not care whether the reviews have been verified or not. They certainly will not go to one site over another—especially one with less [...]

06 Feb 2013

  • Yelp CEO: We’re not scared of Facebook because of our depth of content

    Digital

    Facebook’s new Graph Search emphasizes restaurants, but Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says no competitor is going to torpedo Yelp, at least “overnight,” because the Yelp community has “generated deep, rich content” that’s difficult to replicate. Stoppelman’s remarks were directed to financial analysts today after the company announced that its fourth quarter of 2012 loss narrowed [...]

22 Jan 2013

  • TripAdvisor: A user’s guide to navigating the reviews swarm

    Digital

    You just found out you have a business meeting in Santa Fe or your family is planning a vacation to Paris, and you have no clue about picking a suitable hotel in these cities. TripAdvisor hosts more than 75 million reviews and opinions written by travelers, and most of them are geared toward helping you pick [...]