Articles tagged “gogobot”

Buying a compelling travel domain like Trip.com and thinking it ensures success is like the people who buy a restaurant and think they can run it because they are foodies. Several major travel companies squandered the Trip.com domain because it was a side hustle. Moral of the story? A brand is only as good as the real-world business behind it.

It's no surprise to see Skyscanner absorb the last bits of the user-generated reviews brand formerly known as Gogobot. But the price-comparison search company's bet on soliciting reviews from its own customers remains intriguing. The move highlights its ambition to become a superapp for travel.

We've known this day would come for quite some time now. The only question left to ask is this: Can Airbnb succeed in becoming a "super brand of travel" like it aspires to be?

Gogobot likely paid some big bucks for the Trip.com domain, and it is making strides with a high-quality recommendation app. Still, everyone in the travel space, especially startups, is feeling like they are running uphill as Google tosses boulders downward. Slow, steady steps may win the day.

Expedia inherited some minority investments in travel startups from HomeAway and Trivago, and made a few of its own in 2015. Look for Expedia to spread its money around in 2016, making additional minority investments, as well as a big acquisition or two.

Search engine optimization had a great run but we are way past it now. Instead the top dogs in digital marketing are Google itself and the largest and most skilled players that can pay for those clicks and convert the hell out of them.

Travel startups will never emerge from the startup phase if they can't be creative and figure out a way to scale their businesses and get people to use their websites and apps more than a couple of times per year. Sometimes it means community-building or expanding beyond "travel" into local discovery.

Indiana and Arkansas, which passed a similar law today, should call up Arizona and ask what happened when the travel industry began boycotting the state because of regressive laws.

Gogobot is a small factor today in competing with category leader TripAdvisor on the reviews' front, but the HomeAway partnership will enable it to increase its profile on the back of HomeAway's global footprint.

It's smart for HomeAway to give its users more reasons to use its mobile app to improve their local experience with rides, food, and local attractions.