Skift Take

The TripAdvisor store would be your go-to place to purchase a TripAdvisor Reviewer or Bubbles T-Shirt with all five bubbles. The retail effort could help get TripAdvisor out of the bubble in which consumers think it's just a review site.

TripAdvisor is expected to soon reveal whether it will return to TV advertising this year, but a modest branding exercise of a different sort is under way: The company will open a TripAdvisor-branded store at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

The TripAdvisor store is part of an overhaul of retail shops in Terminal 2 at the airport, according to The News & Observer, and would open in summer 2018, offering travel gear, including possibly some TripAdvisor-branded items, touch-screens for the browsing of vacation spots and perhaps hotels, and an interactive wall.

TripAdvisor hasn’t shared a lot of specifics about what it would sell in the store, but if it has parallels with The TripAdvisor Store online, it would sell T-Shirts, luggage tags, baseball hats, travel packs and passport holders — some branded TripAdvisor and some not.

This first TripAdvisor brick-and-mortar endeavor comes through a partnership with travel retailer Paradies Lagardere, which operates 850 stores and restaurants in nearly 100 airports. Other clients include USA Today, Univision, The Economist, Today, Relay, and CNBC, among others.

TripAdvisor declined to disclose the terms of the marketing partnership.

TripAdvisor is already a well-known consumer brand, and its marketing efforts on TV would try to educate consumers that it isn’t just a place to find reviews and destination information, but is a site to book hotels.

TripAdvisor has allowed consumer reviews of businesses in airports since 2015 and presumably will host reviews of its own store on TripAdvisor.com.

There’s no word yet on plans for any additional TripAdvisor retail locations.

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Tags: branding, marketing, tripadvisor

Photo credit: A TripAdvisor retail store at Raleigh-Durham Airport will likely carry some TripAdvisor-branded items. Pictured is a rendering of the shop. TripAdvisor

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