A closer look at TripAdvisor. How interested are travelers in your destination?

TripAdvisor (now part of Expedia Inc.) is the leading (and I believe was the first mover) travel review site in the world. Many have tried and many more are trying to imitate it. TripAdvisor's home page says "18,114,828 Travelers from 190 Countries Planned Trips Here This Week!" I don't know how the site measures this. If I visit TripAdvisor and just look around or browse, do I count as one of those visitors planning trips?

-

Question: Can TripAdvisor's forums tell us anything about the demand for a destination? Which comes first, interest on a destination or volume of reviews/topics (questions) and posts on TripAdvisor? Do TripAdvisor's users create demand for a destination?

-

While this is not, by any means an exhaustive scientific analysis, I think the numbers do tell us something. You decide what this "something is." (In the past I looked at Google as a possible proxy for interest in a destination and the numbers were also telling. "Are Google results a proxy for people's interest in a certain country?..."

-

If you are not familiar with TripAdvisor, visit the site and do a search for any destination that comes to mind. At the top of the results page you will see som Travel Deals (sponsored links). Below the travel deals you will see a "Location Results" box. This box will have anywhere from a few to several links for the word you chose because there are many locations with the same name. For example, if you search for Mexico you will see 250 results because there are many locations in the world called Mexico (e.g. Mexico, Indiana). It will also include establishments with the word Mexico in them, such as a restaurant called "Mexico" in Derbyshire, England, etc.

-

For the purposes of this post I am focusing on the destination itself, usually the first result in the "Location Results" box. You will notice that underneath the destination's name there are a few links to: Hotels Things to Do Restaurants Deals Forums Maps, etc.

-

When you click on Forums, you go to the forums page for that destination. The forums' table includes the Topic (which many times is a question), the name of the Forum (e.g. Cancun), the author of the Topic (or question), a registered member of TripAdvisor, replies (if any) to that Topic or question and the last time a message was posted.

-

One would think that if there are many Topics or questions about a particular destination, as well as many replies then the conclusion may be that there are many travelers interested in or planning trips to that destination. So I did a search for various countries a few days ago to determine how many Topics and Replies each generated (I mainly focused on TripAdvisor's English language site). This is what I found:

-

Number of Topics/Questions when people searched for the word Canada in TripAdvisor's UK and US versions (same results for both): 30,840 Topics or questions

Number of Topics/Questions when people searched for the words United States in TripAdvisor's UK and US versions (same results for both) versions: 515,126 Topics or questions
-
Number of Topics/Questions when people searched for the word Mexico in TripAdvisor's UK and US versions (same results for both) versions: 209,620 Topics or questions
_
Other destinations:

China – 22,120 Topics/Questions
France – 56,340 Topics/Questions
Italy - 98,480 Topics/Questions
UK - 60,860 Topics/Questions

-

Note: Topics searched went as far back as what's on TripAdvisor more or less since the Fall of 2004.

-

The reader can draw his/her own conclusions. Mine is simple. I wrote about it in my submission to the first version of the Tips From the T-List book entitled "Social Media and SEO are no substitute for Advertising and PR." In order for people to ask questions about a destination or plan a trip there, first they must be interested in it. If we want to see more people talking and asking questions about our destinations, products and services we still need to advertise to them (whether online or offline, but ideally a combination of both). Even though my recently launched Canadamigos.com social network is growing well from promoting it in my Spanish network of sites (sort of in-house advertising) I still think it's important to adveritise it offline and in search engines, in order to get more people interested in the site. On my next post, I will write about my fantasy ad campaign for Canada as a destination.

Happy surfing,

Jaime

Share on Facebook