One of My Favorites, TripAdvisor, Relaunches — I Was Excited And It Beats Mahalo

Many of you know that I am a travel nut. Sadly I could tell you more about transit and hotels than any human should ever know. And to that end, one of my favorite sites over the years has always been TripAdvisor. I was a major member of the community/forums years ago (not so much anymore) and have always struggled with the site – it’s completely 1998 with tons of ads and just bits of content with piled on ads. But the content that’s there is the strongest online. Nothing else compares to TripAdvisor – FlyerTalk comes close but it’s different. TripAdvisor is mainstream travel folks and FlyerTalk is for travel nuts like me.

So when I learned today that they relaunched the site today, I bought a cake with candles and everything! Sadly I am a bit disappointed – actually – I am very disappointed. All they did was slap an updated design on the site – I don’t see any real added functionality over the previous version. The ads are much cleaner now which is a huge improvement over the previous version so kudos on that front.

Though I will say that TripAdvisor kicks Mahalo’s arse on travel pages. Jason loves to run around with his pups shouting about his Paris Hotels page (even used it in LeWeb) and how much better it is than Google’s results. Hey Jason – why don’t you compare yours to TripAdvisor sometime :) The TripAdvisor page has thousands of hotels with thousands of real reviews and customizations, etc. Not a static page that barely gets updated.

So where does TripAdvisor need to go? Baby steps so as not to scare their mainstream user base. First, they need to acquire TripIt. Second, they need to start to focus on the 2nd generation of Internet users who want something more than just great hotel reviews. Think about sites such as Dopplr, Plazes, Driftr, etc. and look at creating a more social travel site — I know you have trip sharing but that’s still barely into 2nd gen. And yes, I understand your bread is buttered on affiliate shares.