TripAdvisor Apologizes Again to Vacation Rental Property Managers
Skift Take
Given their size, TripAdvisor and its FlipKey brand will weather this storm but they have some serious fence-mending to do with vacation rental property managers. It's not just airlines that sometimes cause a lot of pain when they make big technology changes.
With rebellion in the air in the run-up to the just-completed Vacation Rental Managers Association conference in New Orleans, TripAdvisor apologized again for a botched platform migration and subpar customer service that left some professional vacation rental managers removing their listings and wandering around the conclave in a not-so-silent protest wearing pins attached to their lanyards with the TripAdvisor logo crossed out and the invitation, "Ask Me About FlipKey."
FlipKey is a prominent TripAdvisor vacation rental site.
In an "Update From the TripAdvisor Vacation Rentals Team" emailed just before the Vacation Rental Managers event, TripAdvisor stated: "As a valued client of TripAdvisor Vacation Rentals, we thank you for your ongoing business and support. Earlier this year, we made a big change to the business: We undertook a complex platform migration. The benefits of this migration included: the ability to access a larger global audience across TripAdvisor and our affiliates, as well as an improvement in the quality of the software in the long term.
"This transition wasn¹t seamless, and we fully acknowledge it was a challenging time. We¹re very sorry for the trouble it caused."
In late August, more than 100 property managers representing 14,000 vacation rental properties wrote an open letter to TripAdvisor protesting the botched platform migration, including a plethora of problems with the listings, and what they viewed as woeful support from TripAdvisor/FlipKey account managers.
The FlipKey general manager at the time acknowledged many of the problems and said the company was sorry.
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