TripAdvisor breaks the 100 million review barrier

By Mark Frary

It is the classic hockey-stick curve. What I am talking about is the chart showing how TripAdvisor has taken over the world in the 13 years since it was founded.

The company announced last week that it had surpassed another milestone - 100 million reviews. The site is growing faster than ever, giving that hockey-stick-shaped uptick. It really shows the power of social - growth begets growth as more people share more. You can see how the number of registered members has almost exactly tracked the number of reviews.

TripAdvisor is the first travel site to reach such heady heights. It now covers, according to the company, more than two and a half million places to stay, restaurants, and attractions in 116,000 destinations around the world.

The site now has contributions from members living in every country of the world and features hotel reviews in every country but one - see if you can guess which one before you reach the end of this post.

The announcement of the milestone was also accompanied by some other fascinating information. 16 attractions and 26 hotels around the world have been reviewed more than 5,000 times each. New York’s Central Park is the most reviewed attraction (12,327 reviews, of which 9,254 say it is excellent) while the Luxor in Vegas is the most reviewed hotel (10,157 of which 2,004 say it is excellent).

But how can users possibly take in all these reviews. Few people would bother reading more than a few I would suggest. TripAdvisor has introduced filtering to only show reviews made by like-minded people (e.g. families or business travellers) With this spectacular growth, it may have to go even further in personalisation to limit the number of reviews that people have to read.

The newly announced figures also shows the power of Facebook, is such a demonstration were needed. The company first integrated with Facebook back in 2010. Users of Facebook now make up 35% of all reviews on TripAdvisor.

The influence of TripAdvisor - WTM’s 2010 Industry Report showed that of the 36% of people who used social networks when planning, TripAdvisor was the most widely used - is clearly growing.

Many travel companies are worried about this dominance because as well as reviews, TripAdvisor offers the chance to comparison shop for rates at the listed hotels.

Search for the Luxor in Vegas for example, and the comparison shop button is one of the most prominent items on the page, allowing you to compare between Booking.com, Expedia.co.uk, Hotels.com and others.

Good news for consumers, perhaps, but not quite so great if you are an online hotel booking site or travel agency not listed here.

How will TripAdvisor use its dominance now is the question.