Tripadvisor.com was founded by a group of four entrepreneurs named Nick Shanny, Thomas Palka, Stephen Kaufer, and Langley Steinert. They obtained their seed money from the Bollard Group, Flagship Ventures, and other private investors. According to Kaufer, Tripadvisor.com was begun as a website that was focused a lot more on the official words from the pages of magazines, guidebooks, and newspapers rather than as a user-generated social-media-review site. He said that they offered a button right from the start that invited visitors to the site to add their own review and it just took off from there.
In April 2009, Tripadvisor.com was officially launched in China. By 2019, Tripadvisor.com had reached a milestone of 463 million average unique visitors per month. And, in February 2020, the name was changed from TripAdvisor to Tripadvisor.com, simply replacing the uppercase “A” with a lowercase one. In December 2020, Tripadvisor.com had drawn 90.2 million visits, and by January 2021, the app was ranked among the top ten travel apps in more than 26 countries. The Tripadvisor.com website has versions available in 28 languages and 48 markets worldwide. It also features approximately 859,000,000 personal opinions and reviews on some 8.6 million establishments. This includes 1.4 million bed & breakfasts, hotels, inns, and specialty lodgings, 5.2 million restaurants, and 842,000 rental properties plus 1.2 million total worldwide travel experiences.
Today, Stephen Kaufer has been CEO since 2000 and the company’s headquarters are in Needham, MA. They have 2,379 employees and, as of 2019, the company’s revenues totaled 1.56 billion USD.
What is Tripadvisor.com?
It’s an American online travel company and the world’s largest comparison-shopping travel site, providing recommendations to millions of travelers via user comments on 7 million restaurants, attractions, and accommodations, and 500 million reviews. The site also offers a wide range of travel planning options, including a search function for searching 200 websites to find and book the lowest prices on hotels for travelers.
How does Tripadvisor.com work?
Tripadvisor.com helps customers to gather travel information, post their opinions and reviews of travel-related content, and literally engage in interactive travel forums. All bookings are made online via the website, which also offers a complete marketing tools suite, especially for hospitality businesses. Some of them are free, however, there are also paid premium features available.
To begin a hotel search on Tripadvisor.com, just do the following:
1. Click on “Hotels” in the main search menu.
2. Choose your destination.
3. To see specific pricing, enter the number of people and the travel dates at the top.
4. For just photos and reviews, you won’t have to enter this information.
Tripadvisor.com uses several Big Data techniques from large-scale real-time analytics to data mining, statistical modeling, and predictive analytics focused on delivering the best-personalized recommendations.
Do they have an APP?
As the largest travel site in the world, of course, they must have a killer mobile app and it’s FREE. In fact, the Tripadvisor.com mobile app recently reached a major mobile app milestone of 100 million downloads on Androids and iPhones. On top of that, their Tripadvisor.com mobile app has even been recognized in the travel industry for superior innovation and function.
Prices
No Tripadvisor.com Review would be complete without prices, so here we go. Membership is FREE and allows posting photos and reviews, asking and answering questions in their online forums, and creating your very own trip-planning folders. You can create a free account using one of two methods by going to Tripadvisor.com, clicking “Join” at the top-right of the menu, and:
1. With your Facebook account, quickly creating your Tripadvisor.com account is simple using just your login credentials for Facebook.
2. If you prefer to use your email address instead, just enter it, choose your password, and then click “Join”.
Or, if you prefer a little something more, there’s the Tripadvisor.com travel subscription service called Tripadvisor Plus. It runs $99 per year and, if you sign up, you’ll get some impressive discounts on airfare, hotel, and rental packages as well as other services plus one year of Hertz Five Star elite status. Tripadvisor Plus also offers the ability to unlock some additional insider savings, personal pampering services, benefits, and perks. Some of these could include free bottles of wine when you check-in, spa credits, or even room upgrades (when available). And you could even end up saving $350 per stay, making that $99 fee well worth it.
Tripadvisor.com Pros & Cons
Even the most reliable resources for booking airfare, hotel, and rental packages have both their pros and their cons, so here are the ones that we found while researching this Tripadvisor.com review:
Pros:
1. A Safe Travel Platform– Tripadvisor.com is one of the largest, most active price comparison sites worldwide, which means they’re well-equipped for safely managing a wide range of potential problems.
2. High Consumer Ratings– Tripadvisor.com’s overall consumer rating is 4.01 stars, which was derived from 552 reviews that indicated most customers being generally satisfied with their services and purchases. Tripadvisor.com also ranks third among all Travel Guide sites. 3. Free Listings-Tripadvisor.com basic listings are all free, although they do charge nominal fees for enhanced listings that include some features that the free listings don’t.4. Payment Protection– This gives customers peace of mind when they book rentals through Tripadvisor.com. It means getting a full refund for your stay if you don’t get access to your rental upon check-in.
Cons:
1. In September 2018, The Times of London launched a high-profile investigation that uncovered the fact that 33 percent of TripAdvisor reviews were fake. However, a second independent investigation one year later that covered a broader area (250,000 Tripadvisor.com reviews) found that only 15 percent were fake.
2. On April 28, 2020, the company notified its employees that they were going to eliminate 600 Canadian and American jobs plus 300 more worldwide for a 25 percent Covid pandemic reduction in their overall workforce. They also completely closed their offices in both Boston and San Francisco.
3. On Dec 8th, 2020, the entire country of China blocked the Tripadvisor.com mobile app from all its mobile app stores.
Customer Service
To contact customer support for rental properties at Tripadvisor.com, just fill out their art “https://www.tripadvisor.com/RentalsSupport/Customer_Support_Form”>contact form. Or, to discuss your account, any booking, or any listing, you can call customer service toll-free at +1-855-785-9714.
Tripadvisor.com Review Final Thoughts
The main Tripadvisor.com mission is to help people like you all over the world with planning and enjoying the perfect trip of a lifetime. And, if you compare it to other travel booking websites, especially those that specialize in booking hotels and flights together, Tripadvisor.com seems to be one of the absolute safest to use. In fact, you don’t even have to enter your personal info to use it. So, you can now know better, book better, and then just go better!
