It may be the bain of many hoteliers' lives but TripAdvisor is still the best site in terms of its natural searchability, a new study by Greenlight has found. It came up top in nearly 40% of internet searches so no matter what we think of it and its pitfalls, Tripadvisor cannot be ignored.
Only this weekend a friend of mine was ready to book a summer holiday in Italy when, at the last minute, she looked the hotel up on tripadvisor, where to her horror, the reviews stank. All bets were off. Instead of booking the Italian Job, they're going back to the same place they went last year in Portugal. Scary stuff.
The same study found that Hilton.co.uk and Marriott.com were the chains best searches but even these only came up 5% of the time - dwarfed by Tripadvisor.
In other corporate news - IHG keeps its crown as the biggest hotel chain in the world byroom numbers, new research has found.