TripAdvisor - A Role Model For Leading Travel Sites

1. This post is for two types of people - those who want to find sites with good travel information, and those who want to build great website to help travellers have unique experience traveling places. All others should stop reading now!
   
   If you are in this line, I am guessing you are in one or both of the above categories. Awesome! Here are some of my thoughts.
   
   There are tons and tons of sites on travel. In fact if you google "traveling" you will find over 85 million search results. Some focusing on the entire world and all possibilities/categories of travels. Others are focused on very specific destinations which may include one continent, a country or even a specific region. In this blog, I will try to focus on the former time - i,e. not any specific region and all categories of travel.
   
   Enough of talking. Lets do some straight analysis on some of the best sites and why they are so:
   Top google results for "traveling" include sites like expedia.com, wikipedia and travelling USA. I tried changing my search a little typing "world travel" and I start seeing big names like Travel Channel (Page Rank 7) , WorldTravelGuide.com and Lonely Planet. Wow! Lonely planet finally shows up and I like that site and have used it several times over the last 5 years and love some of their books. I then tried googling "travel info" (google shows related keywords and I am trying them out) and here comes Lonely Planet again and some more like Fodors.com (PR 5) and virtualtourist.com (PR 7). (No sign of tripadvisor.com yet). Keywords like "US Travel Guide" shows over 171 million results and Frommers.com (PR 7) ranks high in the search result along with Lonely Planet and Foders. National Geographic (PR 5) shows in the second page along with virtualtourist.com. An unexpected result on the 2nd search page is vegetarianusa.com Still no sign of tripadvisor.com yet.
   
   Now I tried something different. I started focusing on a completely different line of search. My next keyword was "things to do in Utah" and the google search result shows 7+ million results. First one is thingstodo.com and next comes tripadvisor.com. Does it mean tripadvisor focuses just on Utah travel. Let me try other places. I tried searching for "things to do in orlando" and tripadvisor.com is now #1 result in google. I tried "best hotels in Los Angeles" and you guessed it right - tripadvisor.com is #1 again. In fact tripadvisor.com (PR 6) link in google takes me to the most relevant page on their site, i.e. the list of the best hotels in Los Angeles and it gives me more than just hotel information - it includes things to go in Los Angeles as well. TripAdvisor is looking stronger. Lets try something different. I googled "best beach destinations in the US" and here goes tripadvisor.com in the first position and the result also includes Lonely Planet as well.
   
   Conclusion 1: TripAdvisor.com is consistently considered a "great site" by google for information about any major destinations such as Utah or Orlando or Los Angeles. Google also considers TripAdvisor as a very informative site for information about "best hotels" in specific locations as well as for specific travel categories such as "beach destinations". But is tripadvisor.com as informative for other countries such as Europe or evening India or China? That's my next test.
   
   I tried "best beach destinations in India" and tripadvisor.com is not in the 1st page. India specific sites such as luxuryindiadestinations.com and indianbeachesportal.com are top results. I tried to find more about India (such as Goa which is one of the top beach destinations) and then googled "best things to do in Goa" and here comes virtualtourist.com and tripadvisor.com's goa links. The tripadvisor.com search result takes me straight to a page that gives me information about various places in Goa and things to do in Goa. It also shows a list of hotels for Goa on the left panel. It gives me brief comments on what people think about various places in Goa. I tried "best hotels in China" and tripadvisor is one of the common results among many China specific sites. I tried "travel guide for Spain" and Lonely Planet and WorldTravelGuide.com shows up. I googled "places to visit in barcelona" and TripAdvisor.com is #1 in search result.
   
   Conclusion 2: TripAdvisor.com is very revelevant not only for places and hotels and tourist information within the USA but also in other countries in Europe and Asia such as India and China. One thing for sure: Google, one of the most independent search engine, and one that has won the trust from over 80% of the internet users in the world most definitely belives that sites such as TripAdvisor.com, LonelyPlanet.com and WorldTravelGuide.com are some of the best in the world in travel and tourism related information. But why do I go by what just Google says. Hence I decided to analyze and compare some of these sites on my own. Compare some of the best global travel sites such as TripAdvisor.com, LonelyPlanet.com and WorldTravelGuide.com and a handful of very interesting local travel sites such as utah.com and an orlando travel guide
   
   In my next post, I will discuss the three sites - i.e. TripAdvisor.com, LonelyPlanet.com and WorldTravelGuide.com as well as another lesser know site. Till then, thank you for the patience.
   
   
   
   

Best Hotel Review Websites (for India)

There are many website available for reviews of hotels in India. Here are a few of them.

1. Tripadvisor.com - One of the oldest travel review sites on the planet. Although this one is relatively new for India compared to other parts of the world that it covers, still undoubtedly one of the most informative. Here are my opinions about this site:
   
   Pros: Very informative review site - not only about hotels but a lot of information about cities and things to do in and around the corresponding city. Site is easy to navigate. Site has lots of reviews.
   
   Cons: Reviews could be fake - This is one problem with a site like tripadvisor. They try a lot of things to prevent fake reviews. But you cannot be completely successful. I know some people who have tried creating fake reviews and have been successfull in doing so. Site is very crowded with advertisement.
   
   Despite the cons, the site is still one of my favourite and has been an widely accepted one.
   
   


2. Yahoo Travel - Yahoo! one of the most visited sites in the world. However it does not always excel in everything it does. Yahoo has made desperate attempts to do many things and have been unsuccessful in a lot - more so ofter in recent days. Yahoo Travel for India Hotels is one such desperate attempts from Yahoo. Here are my opinions:
   
   Pros: Another Yahoo portal. Has potential of getting better unless Yahoo goes down.
   Cons: Extremely difficult to navigate (not something I would expect from Yahoo). The main link does not give you list of cities in India. (I types India Hotels Reviews and my opinion is based on the link that opened first). Site is crowded with advertisements. It has more information about hotel rates than about hotel quality or customer reviews. Also the site has little or no travel related information about the city. For example, for a famous tourist destination such as Goa, it has only one "Recommended Things To Do" which was "Churches and Convents". This clearly shows the level of maturity of this Yahoo Travel portal.
   
   


3. PushpakReviews.com - One of the most creative sites for hotel reviews. This is still work under progress. Check this out. You may be impressed. Here are some ways why this site is different:
   
   Pros: Adds more flavour to hotel analysis. Provides many different angles of analysis. One such example is "What is a hotel's rating for the last 4 years?". A rating can be 3.5 star but how has the hotel done recently. What is its rating for year 2008? This is important because the overall rating of a hotel may be high but its recent rating may have gone down because of several reasons like change in management, change in service quality or not-good-value-for-money because of rate increase but not service. Another advantage of this site is that PushpakReviews.com covers a lot of budget hotels for over 100 cities across India. Unlike Tripadvisor.com or Yahoo Travel, most ratings at PushpakReviews.com are collected from real travellers who have booked their hotels through one of its sister concern site. Another big advantage is free from advertisement. This separates it from most other travel / hotel review sites. This makes browsing through the site less annoying.
   
   Cons: Site is relatively new (recently launched). Although it has been collecting data since late 2004. Also, PushpakReviews.com is limited to more budget hotel reviews than the luxury counterpart. As of now, no city related information is available - but it's getting there.
   
   Overall, TripAdvisor is more matured where as PushpakReviews.com is definitely a site worth visiting for those curious minds looking for good deals and value for money while travelling in India.

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