TripAdvisor Launches Redesign to Hook the Non-Bookers | Hacker News Reader

TripAdvisor Launches Redesign to Hook the Non-Bookers

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36 pointsjoeyespo42 comments

Trip Advisor used to be an awesome resource with deep knowledge about things to do and attractions in almost every city. Over the past couple of years they made a hard pivot into driving bookings and its now a lot harder to find all of the solid user generated content that used to be front and center. To me, it’s long been indistinguishable from any other booking site, and there’s little reason to visit. The hard left turn toward monetizing their audience feels so short sighted, and this seems like just another optimization tactic heaped on top.

And given that they promoted a non-existing London restaurant to the #1 of London restaurants[1] I'm anyway not quite sure what to think of their rankings.

Reviews used to be much better 10 years ago, but a cotton-industry burping out phony reviews seems to pretty much soil the quality of the reviews.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shed_at_Dulwich

I still think comparisons are more valuable (to both customers AND hosts) than reviews..

I made a comment roughly describing such a system on the HN thread about jail time for fake reviews on TripAdvisor:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17973147

Based on the astounding level of UX dark patterns on TripAdvisor's existing design I can't say I have high hopes for whatever "revamped design" they come up with.

Yes what's with all these travel sites and shady marketing techniques. The worst of the worst is booking.com.

Oh my god, booking a hotel on booking.com gives me anxiety. The constant notifications like "10 people are going to book it", "sorry we sold our last room", "you missed it by 1 min", "last room booked 2 mins ago" feel like they want to just scare you to death with scarcity. Wtf, this site definitely crosses the line between marketing and just plain shady.

You say this, and many commenters agree, however Priceline (because of booking.com) was the top performing stock of the 00s IIRC.

The economics of all these travel sites is now mainly: pay Google less in AdWords fees than you make in commission and expenses (Booking/Priceline is the number 1 spender on AdWords). Booking is the market leader in their conversion, getting people to convert at about twice the conversion of competitors, and they got this way through relentless A/B testing. They were one of the first companies to push A/B testing so hard. Their high conversion rates mean they can consistently bid more for travel AdWords than competitors.

I hate all these dark patterns too, but the data (and booking's business performance over nearly 2 decades) show that it clearly works.

What's even worse with booking.com is their constant spammization.

You know, when I book my room without breakfast there's a reason for that. For example: I don't eat breakfast and are completely happy with a cup of coffee (offered by most better hotels in your room). So, please kindly stop spamming me three times that you "noted that I didn't add breakfast to my booking".

I also don't appreciate three reminders that I can book some overprized airport transportation service. See, there's a reason I didn't book that. Namely that public transport gets me to my hotel in the same time as your overprized service for 1/30th of the price. And since I travel mostly with hand luggage, luggage is really not an issue. So please stop to spam me already!

But the absolute worst is that after I book a hotel I get spammed with mails that "prices in $WHEREVER" just went down.

First of all it's a brazen lie. How do I know? Because I booked a hotel in Sapporo during Golden Week[1] on short notice. Prizes for hotel rooms during golden week don't go down; ever! So yeah, that's one thing. You're liars!

What's worse, though, is that you fuck over your hotels by enticing bookers to cancel and search for something cheaper.

I for one would call all those practices pretty damn scammy. And if somebody has a good alternative to booking.com I'm more than happy to give it a go.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Week_%28Japan%29

These dark patterns are not just looking for anxiety-induced buying. They also help distract from hidden fees, extra charges from currency conversions, and all around lack of clarity on reservations. However, I do know of people who can traverse the website without a bother of all its issues and get really good deals, so there apparently is value to be found under all the screaming UI.

I covered the exact same thing on one of my blogs here[1]. Shameless plug

The reason for these is that they calculate Customer Lifetime value as one time transaction. So they put all their efforts to get a customer to convert on his first visit or so. Booking has a bounce rate of 35% compared to 88% on hotels.com.

Although there is a group of travelers who absolutely despise this, and they would never book from such sites. As a traveler, researching and booking are part of the experience and should not be anxiety inducing.

[1]: https://medium.com/futureoftravel/how-travel-booking-website...

I would have to agree. Booking.com is on its own league.

edreams is just as shitty and even more deceiving, i just use it now to find all avaliable flights and then go to the airline page and book there.

Careful, depending on the airline and their distribution model, it can often be more expensive to book direct (airline.com) than indirect (through an online travel agency such as edreams). I know this is often the case with Emirates

It's definitely worth comparing, if you just want the cheapest bare flight I've found booking through the cheapest agency on comparison sites can be cheaper. However you will usually end up with Ryanair level of service where you can't change anything and are the lowest priority if you the flight is full.

A couple of years ago a friend booked an intercontinental flight, they saved €20 by booking through an agency, but later wanted to cancel the flight due to illness. If they'd booked even the cheapest option direct, they could have paid to do so, but as it was through an agency they couldn't.

On the other hand, if something goes wrong, or you wish to cancel or change your flights, you'll have to deal with the online travel agency, and won't be able to deal with the airline.

Yes, it seems as if some companies (I'm not saying TripAdvisor's one of them) spend more time trying to hack the minds of their customers rather than trying to improve the viability of their business models or the value delivered by their products.

Judging by the screenshot, it's basically Twitter.

Definitely! That confused me. At first sight, I was wondering about the origin of the content. It was a bad idea to rip off Twitter's visual identity in my opinion.

Yeah, it looks uncannily similar!

I spoke to a former VP of tripadvisor when they had acquired Viator. The business model they had was to get commissions on bookings(and ads), and apparently did not get that the volume needed. He compared the experience of browsing trip advisor for booking experiences as 'When you step out of the airport and a 1000 taxi drivers screaming at you all at once to choose their taxi for commute." (he then went on to join Musement I think)

Even now, for hotels they have made it like booking.com. The problem is that I am on tripadvisor for reviews, and would never trust a review from a site when the site is trying to sell me something. Like why would a site show me a negative review if that would mean i would not book the property.

All things said, I think the social feed model could work for them. They are about users browsing the experiences of other users (through reviews, ratings and forums) and this facilitates that. Though other social networks already have a lead in that space. Given their already high distribution, they could have a decent userbase in no time. Eager to see how this one goes.

> and would never trust a review from a site when the site is trying to sell me something.

I guess you don't use Amazon.com?

Two different answers here. If I am looking to buy something that I have already researched elsewhere, I would look at the reviews, but wont lay much weight to it. I have an idea of what the product is and what it is supposed to do before buying. Plus there is trust in Amazon that if the product is faulty, I can get a replacement or refund.

If I am looking to buy something in general(may or may not be from Amazon), and looking for review, I will research on my own, but not look at Amazon for even referencing. It is in their interest to only show good or mildly bad reviews for the product. Especially the ones visible right on top or first scroll.

To buy stuff I've already researched elsewhere? Occasionally.

For reviews? Absolutely not.

Showing negative reviews can make sense if this means you will remain on their website and conduct your research there instead of jumping to some other site. Also for them, it does not matter if you do not book a particular hotel, as long as you eventually book something through their site.

> and would never trust a review from a site when the site is trying to sell me something

I'm not sure I've noticed a difference in reliability between Booking's ratings and TripAdvisor's.

They say they are not changing the "things to do" pages as they for people close to booking. I actually think they are for people that have already booked - I have a trip to Geneva coming in 1 week, let's plan my days...

Also I feel that in the travel industry people have their favourite website where they ultimately go to purchase and TripAdvisor is just not one of those. Anyone I know of thinks of it as helpful travel advice, not a booking engine. People find hotels on Booking.com, look them up on TripAdvisor, book on Booking.com.

I look up hotels on booking.com and TripAdvisor and then head to the hotel’s own website to make the booking.

Same here. Also, often if you call the hotel they'll offer you a better deal as they don't have to pay the big booking agencies.

Every time I've called a hotel they have offered me a more expensive rate, so now I don't.

I've had good experiences with calling, but I upvoted anyway because I do believe there are hotels that are stuck in their ways and have no flexibility to offer a better rate to someone who is trying to price-match booking.com.

I've found this hit and miss. Which I'm surprises by since they save 30% if I book direct

People who call might be less likely to shop around, since calling is a pain.

More like 12-18% with booking.com.

I've been using HotelTonight a lot as it lets me pick a date I might want to go somewhere and it sends me updates on decent hotels as the price goes down. But I use TripAdvisor to check first if it's a good spot to stay.

I do the same except for a short diversion via Google maps reviews (because I find these are the closest to reality you can ever find).

I tend to use TripAdvisor to explore possible hotels in a location. However, the really annoying modal dialog that pops up to insist that you enter booking dates when looking at hotels on TripAdvisor is starting to make me look elsewhere.

95% of the time I use TripAdvisor I'm not booking anything - I'm just looking.

The most annoying thing about TripAdvisor is that they annexed top search results positions for 'sights in city_name'. Their list is automatically generated, has no attractive photos or any description of the places.

Usually I used it to look for a tour agencies to book specific activity (day tour to a desert or afternoon diving), but the more I travel the more annoying it's become to see simple word 'TripAdvisor".

Whats with these websites no longer showing the total price if you are staying more than one night! First Agoda now TripAdvisor.

I would guess user behaviour discovered through AB testing. Not showing the total price probably leads to a higher conversion rate. It's irritating when usability is less important than money

I used to be a major user of the site and i think the reviews on TripAdvisor are a lot more honest and genuine. The problem for me was that TripAdvisor's app did not allow me to book a hotel last time I have tried it, merely provided links to other sites and vast amounts of extraneous features. I ended up uninstalling it.

When you are traveling on an impulse and want to quickly find a room (the whole point of using such an app), the last thing you want is to fiddle with a myriad sites and accounts.

Compare this to booking.com's app, razor sharp focused on getting my card details and book a room. In a few minutes i get a strong guarantee that there is a place to crash to wherever I'm going, and I can go back to enjoying my vacation.

I think I might be in the minority but I use sites like Tripadvisor and Expedia a lot, but they haven't made a penny from me other than through banner ads. If I find a place I like, I Google it and book direct.. solely because I'm paranoid some intermediary might lose my booking or not even be officially representing the hotel or whatever.

TripAdvisor's design team basically just comes up with new dark patterns all day long. A former student of mine worked there and quit after 3 months because their entire team was a bunch of unsalvageable assholes.

They're still using the "free beer and ping pong" method of recruiting to get design grads to work 80 hour weeks.

Oh how I hate card view UIs. So much wasted space. It looks vapid.

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