First read is on us.

Subscribe today to keep up with the latest travel industry news.

TripAdvisor's New Smartphone App Is All About Metasearch


Skift Take

TripAdvisor wants to make its app an indispensable tool to use before the trip and during it. TripAdvisor isn't a hotel review one-trick pony.

Today TripAdvisor took another step into the mobile hotel booking game with the relaunch of its apps for Apple's iOS and Android. The app clearly demonstrates the split nature of TripAdvisor: Half booking tool, half travel guide.

The updated app captures nearly the entire TripAdvisor experience -- hotel reviews, forums, airline bookings -- for the first time, and integrates its metasearch tools to enable booking hotels, activities, and flights. Metasearch within the app is much smoother than the TripAdvisor's previous pop-under-fueled experience online and keeps the booking experience fully framed within the app rather than launching new windows in a mobile browser.

TripAdvisor this year transitioned away from pop-under ads from online travel agencies to hotel metasearch, which it rolled out in mobile first before completing the online launch.

Outside of the hotel discovery and booking process, the updated app borrows elements of its city guide app to help users find a nearby restaurant, attraction, or activity. As with hotels, booking for the latter two is done with partners such as Viator.

Up Next

Hotels

How Data Quality Issues Impact Global Hospitality Operations

There are wide discrepancies in data quality for hotel transactions across global regions, with the largest occurring in Asia-Pacific. Because hotels and agencies need to harness data quality to thrive, they must take a more nuanced regional approach to monitoring potential issues.
Sponsored
Airlines

Air India Moves to Capitalize on India-Australia Ties

Post takeover by Tatas, Air India is rapidly expanding operations to capture international traffic from India. Hope the supply delays for new aircraft and retrofits don't put a damper on its plans.