Profiles of Top Review Sites

TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com)
TripAdvisor is the largest and most popular travel community in the world, with more than 40 million unique
monthly visitors (August 2010), 20 million registered members and more than 45 million reviews and
opinions. Because users create profiles and share user generated content, TripAdvisor is, in fact, also a
specialized social network.

Traveler Reviews
Anyone can login to TripAdvisor at any time to write a review. The fact that reviews aren’validated against bookings has caused some controversy but not enough to diminish the popularity of the site.
In addition to providing open feedback, reviewers rate hotel value, rooms, location, cleanliness,service and sleep quality on a scale of 1 to 5. Reviewers also detail whether they traveled for business or pleasure and whether they traveled alone or not. They also note whether they would recommend the hotel to a friend.

Hotel Responses
Hotel representatives, registered on the site as
‘owners’, can respond to reviews written about their properties. One response is allowed for each customer
review and once posted, the response can’t be edited. All responses are moderated, so hotels won’t see
their review immediately after submission. When approved, the review will be displayed directly underneath
the relevant review.
Hotels that would like to respond to a review should visit http://www.tripadvisor.com/owners to find their
Owner’s Page. Once registered, owners can log on and click on "Manage your listing" at the top-right of any
page to go to the Owners' Center. Click on ‘Respond to a Review’ and follow the directions.

TripAdvisor Response Guidelines
Since all responses are moderated, hotels must adhere to the following guidelines:
• Responses can’t be directed solely to the author of the review or TripAdvisor staff
• No commenting about TripAdvisor policies.
• No profanity, threats, personal insults, reports of violent criminal activity
• No commercial web addresses, e-mail addresses or phone numbers for promotional purposes
• No text entirely in ALL CAPS
• No Hearsay
• No Content not relevant to tourists
• No HTML

TripAdvisor Popularity Index
TripAdvisor Popularity Index is a very visible ranking of a hotel’s popularity ranking in a market.
It has become a very important measure of guest satisfaction and because higher ranking hotels are
displayed first, bookings. The primary factors that determine a hotel’s rank are the quantity of
reviews, how well those reviews rate the property, and how current the reviews are. Furthermore, fraudulent
activity on TripAdvisor can impact rankings.

Additional Information for Hotels
TripAdvisor offers paid opportunities so hotels can include more information in their listings, including the
property's phone number, e-mail and web site address. In addition, paying hotels have the ability to include
special offers in their listings.


Expedia (www.expedia.com/)
Expedia is the largest online travel agency (OTA). Unlike TripAdvisor, Expedia provides travelers with the
ability to research, plan, and book their travel. Because bookings happen on the site, Expedia has verified
the importance of good reviews to drive business. Jennifer Davies, Senior Content Manager at Expedia
says, “On Expedia.com, good reviews of 4.0 or 5.0 generate more than double the conversion of a review of
1.0 – 2.9.”4
Traveler Reviews
A reviewer is required to book a hotel
room with Expedia in order to be
eligible to write a hotel review.
Reviewers use a 5 point scale to rate
overall satisfaction, hotel service, hotel
condition, hotel cleanliness and room
comfort. They can also write a freeform
review.
Hotel Responses
Expedia encourages hotels to monitor and respond to customer reviews. Hotel Partners can respond to
customer reviews via Expedia's extranet, Expedia Partner Central or via email to TravOpin@expedia.com.
Hotel Partners can respond to the reviews that guests have written anytime within six months following the
completion of their hotel stay.
Expedia Partner Central
Once logged in to Expedia Partner Central at https://
expediapartnercentral.com/ hoteliers may click ‘Customer Review
Requests’ to respond to reviews or request removal of reviews.
The hotel must then enter in the information about the review.
No information is pre filled so you must copy and paste the
review and provide information about when it was posted.

Hotelmarketing.com, 2-17-10
Expedia provides the following guidelines about
responding to reviews:
1. Keep your reply focused on the specifics of the
review. The Traveler Opinions section of Expedia
and the Guest Reviews section of hotels.com is not
a place for additional marketing or promotion of
your property.
2. While the reviewer may have taken liberties with
tone, language, and even facts about policy in the
review, we respectfully request that you keep the
tone of your response professional and direct. Do
not post questions or comments directly to the
reviewer. Instead, address the specifics in a manner
that speaks to all Expedia and hotels.com
customers.
3. Avoid references to other hotels or chains,
regardless of whether or not they operate in your
market.
4. Note that Expedia will not post hotelier responses which do not address the specific content of a review. Neither will
Expedia post reviews which contain offensive language or otherwise objectionable content.
5. Responses to positive comments in a review should only be provided to offer clarification about a subject raised.
6. Please keep responses at a maximum of 300 words.
Revinate customers can link directly to their page on Expedia Partner Central if they want to respond to a
review that they see within the Revinate system.

Hotels.com (www.hotels.com)
Hotels.com, an operating company of Expedia, is well known for its Price Match Guarantee.
Traveler Reviews
Like Expedia, Hotels.com ensures
the integrity of reviews by requiring
that customers book a room
through the site and complete their
stay prior to posting a review.
Upon check out, Hotels.com will send the customer an email with a link to access a survey. Reviewers use a
5 point scale to rate the hotel overall, hotel service, hotel condition, room comfort and room cleanliness. In
addition to a free-form review, the reviewer also notes whether he/she would recommend the hotel and what
type of trip it was.
Hotel Responses
Hotels.com encourages hotels to participate in the guest reviews forum by responding to their guest reviews.
Hotel Partners can respond to customer reviews via Expedia's extranet, Expedia Partner Central or via email
to reviews@hotels.com. Please see the previous page for details on using Expedia Partner Central.
Revinate customers can link directly to their page on Expedia Partner Central if they want to respond to a
review that they see within the Revinate system.

Yelp.com (www.yelp.com)
Yelp combines local reviews and social networking functionality to create a local online community. Adding
social web functionality to user reviews creates a de-facto reputation system, whereby site visitors can see
which contributing users are the most popular, respected, and prolific, how long each has been a member,
and which have interests similar to theirs. The site covers restaurants, stores, local businesses and more.
More than 9.8M people came to Yelp in May, 2010.
Traveler Reviews
Reviews on Yelp are often
written in a more playful
manner than on other
review sites and include a
rating based on a 5 point
scale.
Hotel Responses
Yelp allows businesses to respond to reviews privately or publicly, with the public response appearing directly
below the review they’ve commented on. Yelp requires business owners to upload a real photo before
messaging customers in order to make the message personal. To respond to a review, hotels should go to
the ‘Reviews’ tab after logging into the ‘Yelp for Business Owners’ account. From there, hotels will be able to
add a public comment to any of their reviews.
Revinate customers can respond from within Revinate by clicking the ‘Add Owner Comment at Yelp’ link.
Other Tools for Business Owners
To help hotels get the most out of their online presence, Yelp offers a suite of free tools for hotels that allows
them to:
• Track how many people view their business page
• Add photos, a detailed business description, up-to-date information, history, and specialties
• Announce special offers and upcoming events
• Recommend other businesses

Orbitz (www.orbitz.com)
Founded in 2001, Orbitz.com is one of the largest online travel sites. The site was created to address
consumers' need for a comprehensive display of fares and rates in a single location. In May, 2010, the site
had about 8.2M monthly unique visitors.
Traveler Reviews
Reviewers on Orbitz use a 5 point scale to score hotel features and
amenities. Reviewers also can write a free-form comment and provide
travel tips. Orbitz recently changed their policy to allow anyone to write a
hotel review, regardless of whether he/she booked the hotel through
Orbitz.
Hotel Responses
Hotels are not able to respond to traveler reviews on Orbitz.



Travelocity (www.travelocity.com)
Travelocity is the sixth largest travel agency in the world. Travelocity’s key differentiator is ‘The Travelocity
Guarantee’ which ensures that Travelocity will take care of travelers during their stay if conditions aren’t
pleasant. For example, they will try and relocate travelers to a different hotel if they arrive and there is a
renovation project going on that causes undue noise.
Traveler Reviews
Anyone is able to write a hotel review on
Travelocity, regardless of whether they have
booked a room through Travelocity or not.
(Note: Travelocity includes a Tip that reviewers
should only review hotels that they have
stayed in during the last 12 months, but there
is no verification step.)
Reviewers write a review and score the hotel
and its amenities on a 5 point scale, and
indicate whether they would stay at the hotel
again.
Hotel Responses
Travelocity recently changed its policy to allow management responses to reviews. In a note to hoteliers the
representative said, "Hotels are highly encouraged to respond to reviews as it shows that the hotels value
their customer’s opinion. Responding also creates additional genuine content about the hotel which search
engines can find."
Management responses can be emailed to Joshua.bright@travelocity.com. The email should contain your
Sabre hotel ID as well as contact information, review title, review date, and proposed response. Responses
are moderated, much like TripAdvisor. Reviews will be rejected if you break the following rules:
i. Topics or media unrelated to a travel experience
ii. Mention of competitors or specific price paid
iii. Personally identifiable information, such as full names
iv. Materials that infringe a copyright
v. Obscenities, discriminatory language, or other language not suitable for a public forum
vi. Advertisements, “spam” content, or references to other products, offers, or websites
vii. Email addresses, URLs, phone numbers, physical addresses, or other forms of contact information
viii. Critical or spiteful comments on other reviews posted on the page or their authors

Priceline (www.priceline.com)
In addition to proving discounted hotel rooms and other travel services, Priceline is best known as the ‘Name
Your Own Price’ Web site.
Traveler Reviews
Hotels reviews on Priceline can only be
written by guests who stayed at the
hotels and booked through Priceline.
Guests are emailed a survey following
their hotel stays. The survey asks guests
to rate hotel features on a scale of 1 to 10 and provide free form answers about what they liked and didn’t
like about the hotel.
Interestingly, individual amenity ratings aren’t exposed to the
public. Rather, an individual’s ratings are averaged out to reveal
one score.
However, the average scores of the hotel features are revealed in
the hotel’s overall score.
Hotel Responses
Hotels are not able to respond to reviews on Priceline.


Yahoo Travel (travel.yahoo.com)
Yahoo Travel is the 5th most popular US travel agency.
Traveler Reviews
Any user on the site can write a hotel review.
Using a 5 point scale, reviewers rate service,
cleanliness, location, value and the hotel overall.
Reviewers also enter a free form field about
what they like and dislike about the hotel. There
is no verification that a reviewer stayed at the
hotel.
Hotel Responses
Hotels are not allowed to respond to reviews posted on Yahoo Travel.


TravelPost (www.travelpost.com)
TravelPost is a community built by travel enthusiasts for travel enthusiasts. The site contains over a million
reviews, photos and blogs.
Traveler Reviews
Any visitor to the site can create a hotel
review. Reviewers rate hotels on a 5 point
scale and provide a free-form review. In
addition, they have the option to post the
reviews to their Facebook profiles.
Hotel Responses
Hotels can respond to reviews by using the
comment feature and checking the ‘I
represent the hotel’ box. In addition,
TravelPost will investigate factual errors raised
by hotels and remove the review if it can be proven to be a lie.
Other Information for Hotels
Hoteliers can visit the owner page to add their hotels for free. Once a hotel is added to sister site Kayak, it
automatically appears on TravelPost.com and SideStep.
Unlike other sites, TravelPost allows guests to receive incentives (like a coupon for a future stay) for writing
reviews, but hoteliers cannot tell guests what to say in the review, and the reviewers must disclose that they
were given incentives by the hotel to write the review.

Credit To:
Hoteliers Guide to Review Sites and Forums
http://www.Revinate.com/