Back to the Future? Tripadvisor Debuts Brand Ad Campaign Highlighting User Reviews

If there were any sizzle about Tripadvisor in recent years, it came from its fast-growing tours and activities brand, Viator, which launched a national ad campaign in November.

But parent company Tripadvisor has quietly launched its own brand campaign, "We've been there" — its first in a couple of years.

The ad shows a dad with two kids marveling at a dinosaur monument, touts solo travel featuring a woman vacationing in Lisbon, and celebrates a couple lingering at a restaurant.

As the screen fills up with a dozen or so headlines from Tripadvisor user reviews about restaurants, the narrator delivers the tagline: "Whatever trip you're planning, we've been there."

Interestingly, although the latter portion of the ad is heavy on restaurants, the 30-second spot doesn't mention Tripadvisor's restaurant reservations brand, TheFork. This ad is all about building up the Tripadvisor brand, and the user reviews that made the brand famous worldwide to begin with.

Tripadvisor has gone through many versions of itself in its 24-year history. It started curating other outlets' travel stories, grew to fame on its user reviews about hotels and restaurants, tried to become a metasearch giant like Kayak and Google, attempted to become a booking site, a hotel-discount subscription business, and then became a force in experiences on the back of its Viator brand.

Now, according to the ad's messaging, it is highlighting the expertise from its traveler-written reviews. The company said it hosts "more than one billion user-generated ratings and reviews."

So, in a sense, the company is trying to move ahead by leveraging the foundation of its past.

Ads of the World earlier reported that the campaign, crafted by SuperBloom House, includes the 30-second spot, and "three 15-second hero spots," as well.