Rival online travel giants Booking.com and TripAdvisor have both launched new destination pages designed to better inspire their users to find their perfect place to holiday.
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Booking.com and TripAdvisor look to make destinations the inspiration for holiday search
Rival online travel giants Booking.com and TripAdvisor have both launched new destination pages designed to better inspire their users to find their perfect place to holiday.
Priceline-owned Booking.com has unveiled its “Passion Search” destination finder backed by a new algorithm enabling people to find the places where they can pursue their interests.
And TripAdvisor has redesigned its destinations pages, and started offering destinations an enhanced commercial partnership to improve their promotion on the site.
Both firms are looking to achieve what many have tried and failed to do in the past – remember Hotels.com’s Inspirator? – and revolutionise the way we search for our holidays.
Booking.com claimed their attempt is “the most comprehensive of its kind in the travel industry – perfectly matching people’s unique passions and interests with the best destination and accommodation to suit their needs”.
David Vismans, chief product officer at Booking.com, said: “Booking.com is not just about a transaction. We are all about the experience.
“We can certainly help people find the perfect spot – whether it’s a hotel, a villa or an apartment – in any city or local town in the world.
“But what about the people who have a passion but don’t know where to go? Now we have created technology that can unearth the perfect destination – anywhere in the world – tied to the passions of our customer base.
“Our aim is to connect every traveller with those possibilities which perfectly match their personality, desires and ambitions.”
Meanwhile TripAdvisor said its redesigned destination pages will allow partners to “complement the site’s user-generated content with sponsored content, including additional insights about great things to do and see in-destination”.
Destination Management Organisations who sign up to be a ‘Premium Destination Partner’ will be able to publish various types of content, such as lists of restaurants or attractions, articles and information about local events.
TripAdvisor said: “TripAdvisor is committed to helping travellers choose a great destination for their trip. To give its users the tools and resources they need to make informed decisions about where to go.”
Premium Destination Partnerships are available across all of TripAdvisor’s points of sale in 28 languages.TripAdvisor, meanwhile has announced the arrival of Jonathan Howlett in the newly created role of vice president of global destination marketing.
Howlett joins TripAdvisor from digital media analytics specialist comScore where he led a team in London tasked with helping clients measure their online and mobile advertising effectiveness.
Prior to that Howlett was global director of advertising sales for BBC World News where he oversaw the launch of advertising on BBC.com. Howlett is based in London. He is a graduate of the AMP program at Harvard Business School and holds a master’s degree in marketing from Lancaster University in the UK.
