1. Insighter – November 14, 2005
CONTENT AND COMMUNITY SITES: ARE THEY READY FOR PRIMETIME?
By Rob Wald
Up until 2000, the growth of online travel focused largely on the purchase transaction.
Starting in 2000, sites sprung up to address those seeking more help during the travel plan­
ning process. These sites evolved from a narrow focus – i.e., hotel reviews – to encompass
much more, including destination and vacation reviews, and communities where users can
share and track opinions, journals, and photos provided by other site members. The growth
and success of these online travel content and community sites have attracted significant
attention. Within the past two years, IAC Travel (now Expedia Inc.), Cendant Corporation,
and Sabre Holdings – parent companies of the three largest (“Big Three”) domestic online
travel agencies – have each made acquisitions in the content and community space, involv­
ing TripAdvisor, Away.com, and IgoUgo, respectively. This space has also witnessed a num­
ber of new entrants, all claiming to find a new and unique way to assist those going online
to plan their trip. However, these sites are still immature and must address significant chal­
lenges in a more meaningful way before they can be considered mainstream travel planning
tools.
Lest one gets the wrong idea – online travel content and community sites DO provide value.
Since their inception, two of the largest such sites – TripAdvisor and IgoUgo – have experi­
enced exponential growth in visitors, members and number of reviews. In the case of at
least TripAdvisor, such member and content growth has of course played a key role –
among other factors - in attracting strong advertiser revenue delivering consistent prof­
itability. However, the growth and success of online travel content and community sites can
best be understood in the context of available alternatives that are far less convenient. Top
sources for vacation planning advice include (besides the Internet) friends and family, travel
agents, and books and magazines. Most of these sources demand too much of our personal
time, which, unfortunately with today’s more hectic pace of life, is at a premium. Relative to
such alternatives, online travel content and communities – as sources of planning advice –
are far more efficient, though the jury is still out on their effectiveness.
To evaluate the effectiveness of online travel content and community sites (as a group),
PhoCusWright looks at four of the key challenges these sites face:
(a) access to content (and community)
(b) managing content quality
(c) content relevance (or personalization)
(d) content representation (or site usability and navigation)
Getting access to content is not a significant challenge. Most, if not all, of the content and
community sites provide overview-level hotel and destination content provided by editorial
staff, and/or and third parties such as Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), Destination Mar­
keting Organizations (DMOs), major newspapers’ travel columns, and well-known consumer
guides such as Fodor’s and Frommers. End users, of course, provide the primary source of
content. To entice Web site visitors to provide content, some sites provide awards and in­
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2. centives. For example, IgoUgo offers “GO Points” that accumulate toward awards with re­
tailers and airlines. GO Points require “quality” contributions based on the opinion of the ed­
itorial staff. Although incentives are of course helpful, they seem to drive quantity, but not
necessarily quality (more on quality in a little bit). Growth of online travel content and com­
munity sites is also spurred by members and contributors who find that these sites are fun
to visit, regardless of whether or not they are planning a specific vacation. As with other
user review-oriented sites, contributors are also motivated by a desire to help others, rein­
forcing existing growth forces.
While accumulating content is a relatively straightforward exercise, delivering quality con­
tent based on user contributions presents more thorny issues. Professional editorial staffs
play a key role in managing user contributions, but remember that even though editors can
filter out the worst of the reviews, the base of reviews come from contributors who are not
professional writers, and for the most part have little idea of how to craft a useful review.
For example, it is not uncommon for hotel reviews to provide no more than 1-2 short sen­
tences that focus on either minor details (e.g., bedding or décor) or on high-level comments
(e.g., close to shopping or attractions) that provide little insight into why a hotel is a good
choice or not. It is helpful that contributions are generally more blunt and candid than pro­
fessional reviewers, but it can be confusing because there are widely differing opinions on
the same hotel. Another area where content and community sites can fall short is the lack
of content once users get more specific (e.g., activities in a certain destination) with their
searches. Overall, despite these challenges, the online content and community sites mostly
provide quality information. However, quality, as a measure, is only meaningful when com­
bined with another key measure: relevance.
Relevance is by far one of the greatest challenges faced by online content and community
sites. Relevance is critical because even high quality, well-written reviews provide little val­
ue unless they match specific tastes, values and preferences. Established sites offer varying
capabilities to increase relevance. TripAdvisor provides few known capabilities (other than
features such as “TripWatch”) to enhance relevance while IgoUgo leverages a comprehen­
sive user profile that maps to its vertical search engine. Unfortunately, the relevance deliv­
ered by the vertical search engine is itself limited by the available profile settings, which,
strangely enough, do not include a setting for budget tolerance. While TripAdvisor and IgoU­
go do a good job providing content for the largest cities, they are both challenged to find
content if one digs a bit deeper on specific activities (e.g., kayaking in Boston, or leaf-peep­
ing in Vermont). These are not obscure activities or narrow searches!
Two of the most interesting recent ideas in this space involve using demographic profiles
and leveraging trust-based relationships, including friends and family. Two startups, Travel­
Post and TripConnect, focus on relevance as a key component of their strategy. Travelpost
invites users to search for travel reviews and content based on demographic and other user
profile characteristics, such as age, location and budget tolerance. TripConnect enables
users to leverage friends and family (via Internet-based social networking made more fa­
mous by sites such as Friendster.com and LinkedIn.com) to access reviews and content that
may be more trusted. Although TravelPost and TripConnect are focusing on key issues and
taking unique approaches, it will likely be very difficult for them to adequately address all of
the key issues discussed here.
Content representation and relevance are just as inter-related as relevance and quality:
content only becomes relevant if you can find it - quickly. As such, content representation
(or site usability and navigation) is another key challenge that online content and communi­
ties face. All of these sites have enormous amounts of information and the challenge is of
course to help users, as quickly as possible, find the content that is important and relevant
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3. to them. Unfortunately, because of all of the content that is available, it becomes very chal­
lenging to make choices, particularly when many of the reviews are upbeat about a specific
hotel, destination, or activity. Looking at it in this way, one can see how an overwhelming
amount of content can be detrimental to the user experience. This is why relevance and
representation are so inter-related: hopefully, one can find a way (i.e., profiles, recommen­
dation engines, etc.) to filter out less relevant content as a means to cut through the clut­
ter. One interesting innovation to address this challenge (that has yet to be fully exploited)
is IgoUgo’s Find A Travel Expert feature, which provides an ability to bail out of do-it-your­
self mode and enlist the help of an offline travel agent. Another key challenge, and one that
it is not handled adequately at all, is how to present content in a larger travel planning and
purchasing experience. The biggest downside to all of these sites is that content is present­
ed in silos (i.e., destinations, hotels, activities, attractions), and presented (mostly) outside
of the purchase experience. All of these sites need to do a better job walking users through
a complete planning and purchasing experience (perhaps even giving users an opportunity
to create tentative itineraries) by connecting and more tightly integrating all of the ele­
ments, including transportation, hotel, restaurants, activities, attractions and other informa­
tion.
Once again, it is important to recognize that the online content and community sites have
created something of value, and of great potential. Existing growth (and mergers and acqui­
sition activity) demonstrates the value that is being delivered – to both users and to adver­
tisers. Without a doubt, one can easily see how savvy Internet users can visit any one, or
several, of these sites and begin to effectively plan a vacation. However, for such sites to
attract mainstream users, or less savvy Internet users, they must take a step back and
think more clearly about how their sites fit into a larger planning and purchasing experience
– and build themselves out to address this task flow. As with many endeavors, greater inte­
gration brings greater value. Although one can clearly recognize how it is important (and
part of the value proposition) for the content and community sites to remain independent
sources, one can also recognize that many users would gladly forego such independence if it
were possible to have a more integrated and efficient overall planning and purchasing expe­
rience.
It is interesting to see how a few players, including both Yahoo! and Expedia, recognize this
need. Yahoo! has recently released (beta) its Trip Planner feature that combines its travel
content and community capability with a planning capability where users can create detailed
trip itineraries that can be shared among friends and family. Expedia has, for some time
now, helped its users plan and purchase (somewhat) entire vacations, including tickets for
specific activities. It would be even more interesting to see how Expedia Inc. (parent com­
pany of both Expedia.com and TripAdvisor) and Yahoo! (including FareChase) – and Sabre
and Cendant - plan to integrate their assets to provide a more integrated experience. Soon
we will see yet another type of convergence – between travel planning and travel purchas­
ing. Stay tuned.
Content Site Parent Company Founded/Acquired
TripAdvisor.com Expedia Inc. 2000/2004
IgoUgo.com Sabre 2000/2005
Away.com Cendant 1998/2005
TripConnect.com Privately held 2005
TravelPost.com Privately held 2005
Travel.Yahoo.com Yahoo! 1994
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