TripAdvisor adds new enhanced listings features for hotels, restaurants

TripAdvisor is enhancing its suite of tools and subscription-based ad products for both hotels and restaurants. The two programs are “Business Advantage” for hotels and “TripAdvisor Premium for Restaurants.”

Both offerings give hospitality and restaurant marketers new capabilities and greater control over their listings. Effectively, they’re enhanced listings. Basic listings remain free.

The Business Advantage program enables hotels to feature a “favorite review” near the top of the profile page. The hotel also gets the ability to present their “best photos” and present “cover photos” for each album on the hotel profile page. There’s also a beefed-up analytics suite “with extensive traveler, engagement and competitor data.”

TripAdvisor Premium for Restaurants offers some similar capabilities.

Restaurants get to post a favorite review near the top of the page. They also receive an enhanced analytics package and live phone support. A coming-soon feature is called “Storyboard,” essentially a photo carousel.

TripAdvisor says Storyboard “will enable restaurants to turn their static photos and reviews into a dynamic visual presentation that showcases a restaurant’s best features and delivers a powerful first impression to new customers, as well as a reminder for why past customers should dine again.”

The pricing for these enhanced listings products is fee-based (although there’s a quasi-performance formula for the restaurant offering based on traffic). TripAdvisor offers both PPC and subscription-based advertising.

The company claims more than four million restaurant listings and 100 million reviews on the site. In the third quarter of 2016, TripAdvisor announced revenues of $421 million, roughly 17 percent of which is based on subscriptions. Total revenue for 2015 was $1.5 billion.

The company originally drove leads to hotel sites but has recently added direct hotel booking and has been aggressively building out non-hotel content. Globally, the site claims nearly 400 million monthly uniques.