TripAdvisor Product Chief Says Transition to Booking Site Isn't Easy
Skift Take
Next year will be a make or break year for TripAdvisor Instant Booking. Either the economics work out and consumers start treating TripAdvisor as a booking site or the company will have to pivot. It's a tough slog with much potential. TripAdvisor is playing the long game on this; let's talk next year at this time to see how the game works out.
Adam Medros, TripAdvisor's global head of product for the last three years, has been at the company for about a dozen years.
Medros has been through numerous product launches ranging from mobile apps to metasearch three years ago, but he says the current transition into becoming a booking site "is one of the harder products I've ever worked on at TripAdvisor."
"It's hard work," Medros says. "Maybe harder than we thought."
Not that Medros lacks confidence about TripAdvisor's ongoing attempt to supplement reliance on advertising clicks to online travel agencies and hotels, or metasearch, with Instant Booking transactions, where consumers can book hotels without leaving TripAdvisor sites.
"We are building off an incredible asset," Medros says, citing the company's 450 million user reviews and opinions, and an accelerating pace of content contributions, now averaging 280 per minute.
But these are user reviews, which is TripAdvisor's core competency and what built TripAdvisor into a company that attracts 390 million average monthly u
