5 Quick Tips to Attract Travelers to Your Tour or Activity Business
TripAdvisor is likely the most well-known and well-loved online review site for the travel industry. Tourists from around the globe head to TripAdvisor in order to learn more about hotels, restaurants, attractions, tour and activities for a given destination. They find TripAdvisor to be a trustworthy forum where they can read honest, objective feedback from fellow travelers who had first-hand experience with the company in question. As a tour and activity operator, getting to the top of the TripAdvisor rankings can give your business a significant boost, both in bookings as well as in name recognition.
So how do you accomplish this goal?
Understand the TripAdvisor Rankings Algorithm
Similar to Google, the TripAdvisor rankings are based on an algorithm that uses several factors to rank the travel companies and tourism businesses that have profiles on the site. While the algorithm is incredibly complex and frequently changing, there are three main factors that are considered when ranking businesses:
- Average score — Users who submit feedback on TripAdvisor rate the individual businesses that they visit or work with, and these ratings are used in order to determine an average score for the business. The highest score that you can receive is 5 stars, which is obviously what you want to strive for. This is the most critical metric in the TripAdvisor algorithm.
- Number of reviews — Travel businesses that earn more reviews are ranked better than those that have fewer reviews. Ultimately, TripAdvisor feels that a business is more credible if it has a significant number of reviews rather than just a few reviews. Naturally, a business that has a 5-star rating but from only 2 reviews will not be considered as credible as one with a 5-star rating from 275 reviews. The more people that rate your business, the better ranking you will be able to achieve on TripAdvisor.
- Recency of reviews — When calculating your average score, TripAdvisor will weigh the most recent reviews more heavily. This allows travelers to have an accurate understanding of the current score for the individual business.
Know the Importance of TripAdvisor Within the Industry
TripAdvisor is a valuable resource for travelers, and they are heavily influenced by the information that can be found on the site. Your ranking and the feedback that you receive on TripAdvisor is critical to your success in the tour and activity industry. Data shows that travelers are relying more on online reviews than ever before, and they consider the information there to be more powerful than anything found in a marketing campaign. It’s critical that you make your TripAdvisor page a priority for your business.
TripAdvisor is an online review platform that you simply cannot ignore as a tour and activity operator. Maintaining a presence on this site, and encouraging positive feedback while also engaging with those who review your brand, is necessary to your success in the global, social travel industry of today. In order to learn more about how TripAdvisor fits into your overall distribution strategy, download the Rezdy online distribution ebook now.
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Simon has over 15 years’ experience as an IT professional. He also has extensive experience in the travel industry from being an around-the-world traveller and managing a dive centre in Southeast Asia for over 3 years. Simon is now dedicated to providing the best online booking solution for tours and activities operators; he is the brains behind Rezdy.Outside office hours Simon is a true activity addict – mountain biking, sailing, swimming, beach volleyball – just to name a few. But most of all he loves diving in Australian waters.