Report

Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Maria A started this discussion 10 years 2 months ago

Trip Advisor keeps pressuring us to 'upgrade' our free listing to a business listing so our website address is clickable and then to further upgrade to a pay-per-click scheme. Prices for the business listing have varied from around $1000 to over $8000 depending on location. I'm just not sure an $8K investment is worth it...

Anyone have a business listing they have found worthwhile..or worthless?

thanks,

Comments

Report

Rucksack Brian

10 years

They asked us for a lot less money than that, but I still thought it was a waste of our marketing dollars. The link to your own website is not going to be anywhere near as prominent as the links to the OTAs. The exception to this is if you run a special deal. That looked like it would get decent exposure at the top of the listing, which was the most tempting part of the Business Listing offer that they made me. Despite the tiny link to your site or the reasonable Special Deal promotion, the big inviting call to action encouraging readers to book through the OTAs is still too likely to win out, so why pay more?

If they would remove the OTA listings I would jump on it, but they won’t because that partnership is worth too much money for them. If *I* removed my hostel from the OTAs so that they wouldn’t show up as options on the TA listing then I would strongly consider it, but I’m not prepared to do that right now either. So for the moment, I’ll let the TA Business Listing pass me by.

Regarding TripConnect, you have to have a Business Listing before you can even bid, so I have not tried this approach to know if it would have positive results for us or not.

Report

slushysnow

10 years

We have a business listing and have noticed a big increase in our direct bookings. I think it took about 1 month for the commission saved from those extra direct bookings to cover the annual cost of the business listing, so from our point of view it was definitely worth it.

We haven't bothered with TripConnect, mainly because I don't think I can outbid the likes of booking.com, but I think the business listing has definitely been worth it for us.

Don't be afraid to negotiate with TripAdvisor regarding the cost of the business listing. Explain to them that you are not a hotel, but are a hostel and so cannot afford the massive fees. I would be surprised if you can't negotiate a discount of some sort.

*edit* - One thing we did when making the decision to subscribe or not was to work out how many extra, commission-free room nights we would need to sell to cover the cost. For example, say your ADR is $25 and commission rate is usually 12% and they have quoted you $2000 for your business listing, you would need to sell about 667 extra room nights to recoup the cost. This sounds like a lot, but say your average length of stay is 3 nights, it means you only need 222 people to book direct rather than through the OTAs over the whole year to make your money back.

*edit 2* - If you do decide to make the leap, I highly recommend you go for the Desktop + Mobile option.

Report

fofiex

10 years

I had it on my hostel in Panama, sincerely it was the biggest waste of money I did, plus they will charge you whatever is your budget, they started on 80 dollars, and ended up charging around 45 per month. I used to get best response from Instagram and not even using a penny on that. I used all functionalities and it really didnt worked and is a waste of money.

Report

matt70

10 years

To make things short again :

TripAdvisor is ShitAdvisor !

Report

Ria

10 years

Thanks for the feedback. It's appreciated.

Report

Denis Moz

10 years

I use business listing + trip connect + freetobook, I'm very happy.

If you use maximum 2 OTA, your official site will appear whatever the bid of the OTA is, who cares in which position if you are clever with your prices :evil:

What's worrying is that the price of the business listing is increasing sharply... But google is entering the war and will connect as well IBE... :cash:

Report

John Moriarty

10 years

Tripadvisor now have a new option called Tripconnect Instant Booking.

I have started a new thread on that topic if anyone is interested

http://www.hostelmanagement.com/forums/tripadvisor-new-booking-option.html

Report

Denis Moz

10 years

Unfortunately, I was wrong... I'm only working with 2 OTA's, assuming that whatever my BIDs are, my official site would appear... Not true anymore... TA now won't display your official site if your BID is lower than what they decide - different for each country...

Search form

Report 'Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Report 'Re: Trip Advisor Business Listing - worth the $$ or not?'?

Join the world's largest community of hostel professionals.

Check Your Email