Will TravelPost Be The New TripAdvisor?
I saw mention of TravelPost on Gadling. Their CEO, Steve Hafner, wants to make it a true competitor to Trip Advisor, which got me thinking. I hadn’t seen TravelPost in a few months, and decided to revisit the site.
TravelPost was bought in 2006 by Kayak. One nice feature I like, is that they include more immediately accessible information than TripAdvisor when it comes to describing the reviewers.
Only about a third of a million reviews are currently posted on TravelPost, which while it may seem like a lot, means that many places (including those in Hawaii), just don’t have any reviews. For example, a search on their site for Waikiki hotels lists only 10 properties.
I’m also not sure TravelPost has done anything more than TripAdvisor when it comes to assuring the public that their reviews are objective and not fake. This I believe is a huge problem in relation to travel review site credibility, and I haven’t seen any site take this problem seriously.
Here are a couple of facts:
TravelPost
- Owned by Kayak/Sidestep
- June 2008 unique visitors: 615K
TripAdvisor
- Owned by Expedia
- June 2008 unique visitors: 7,615K
In the end, I think the travel review business is still in for big changes. Kayak will need to spend a lot of time and energy on Travelpost to make it a viable competitor. And, there are inherent conflicts of interest since both TripAdvisor and TravelPost are owned by online travel agencies.
If you have any experience with TravelPost, be sure to comment.
