TripAdvisor Helps Accommodations Owners Win Additional Market Share - New Performance Analytics Launched for Sponsored Placements

“Sponsored Placements is a powerful tool – it’s saving the season for us. Sponsored Placements has increased our year over year bookings by 25%” David Martinez i Urgell, Digital marketing & ecommerce strategy for Derby Hotels Collection New performance reporting for Sponsored Placements shows ads deliver 17% average increase in unique visits to a property’s TripAdvisor listing New enhancements to Business Advantage also added

TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) has announced the launch of new ads performance reporting for Sponsored Placements customers that provides accommodation businesses with valuable, actionable metrics to help them drive incremental awareness and business through their ad campaigns. The new analytics come on the heels of a series of enhancements to TripAdvisor’s advertising solutions for accommodation providers, developed based on feedback from businesses.

Sponsored Placements, the recently launched advertising solution, is building in popularity as it enables accommodation businesses to capture traveller interest and drive targeted traffic to their property through high visibility ad placements on TripAdvisor. With this latest enhancement, advertisers will be able to measure the impact of their campaigns at a glance from within their Management Centre, with valuable performance analytics and insights into competitive intelligence metrics such as market share. The new performance reporting shows that, on average, Sponsored Placements customers are seeing an uplift of 17 per cent in unique visits to their TripAdvisor listing.

“We see Sponsored Placements as a real game changer and our clients are seeing the results too – mostly because it’s helping accommodation businesses influence potential guests during a critical phase of the customer purchase path, but also because it’s what the industry has been asking us for, and we’ve delivered,” said Martin Verdon-Roe, Vice President of Hotel Product & Marketing, TripAdvisor. “Now we’re giving Sponsored Placements customers the key performance metrics they need to ensure they can measure the success of their campaigns and make strategic decisions about budget and timing. We’re also continuing to invest in our existing solutions for accommodation businesses with a series of recent enhancements to optimise Business Advantage features. All of these improvements help accommodation owners drive direct booking referrals and build customer loyalty.”

Sponsored Placements performance reporting capabilities include:

Visibility into number of ad impressions
Number of visits to a property’s TripAdvisor listing, including incremental traffic
Booking referrals generated as a result of ads
The percentage market share for a property in locations where their ads are showing

“Sponsored Placements is a powerful tool – it’s saving the season for us,” says David Martinez i Urgell who leads the digital marketing and ecommerce strategy for The Derby Hotels Collection, a family-owned 14 property chain based primarily in Barcelona. Martinez i Urgell knew 2018 was going to be a difficult year for tourism in the market so he decided to try Sponsored Placements to get an edge over the competition: “With your Sponsored Placements listed above search results, it catches more people’s eyes and they click to learn more. We aim to delight potential guests on TripAdvisor with our reviews, photography and services. We thought that the more travellers see us on TripAdvisor, the more bookings we could convert. Sponsored Placements has increased our year over year bookings by 25% and we’re getting 6% more in revenue. This is particularly impactful because some of our competitors are down 30-40%, forcing them to reduce services and amenities. We’ve been able to avoid this reduction.”

Sponsored Placements is available to all accommodation providers with an active Business Advantage subscription, who share live rates and availability through TripAdvisor. Sponsored Placements and Business Advantage are designed to work together; ads drive high quality traffic to a property’s listing, where the tools and features available to Business Advantage subscribers help to influence and convert potential guests.

As part of ongoing efforts to improve TripAdvisor’s suite of solutions for accommodation providers, enhancements to Business Advantage were also announced today. These include:

Adding subscriber website links to organic search results on TripAdvisor, providing potential guests with another opportunity to click directly through to a property’s site
Making subscriber website links more prominent within the contact details on a property’s listing on TripAdvisor
Optimising subscriber contact details on mobile web to increase visibility for potential customers
Adding website details to property overview section on TripAdvisor listing pages

“I’ve had Business Advantage for three years, driving interest in my properties with Special Offers and I’m able to be more strategic relative to competitors with the Analytics Suite,” says Zhivko Zhelyazkov, hotel manager for independent boutique hotels Forum Hotel and Central Hotel in Sofia, Bulgaria. “I believe combining Sponsored Placements with the success we’ve already seen with Business Advantage could help us reduce OTA commission payments and easy occupancy challenges in the slow season. For the two months I’ve had Sponsored Placements, direct bookings are up by more than 150% over last year. I am getting more direct referrals to my Business Advantage contact details, especially my website link.”

Find out more about Sponsored Placements and Business Advantage here.