With my TripAdvisor workshop at Arival in Las Vegas due at the end of the month (the 25thof September, to be exact), it feels serendipitous to me that a recent study has categorically confirmed the importance (and influence) of TripAdvisor to the international tourism industry.
If any tourism brand still needs to be convinced of the importance of ranking on TripAdvisor, I think this should do the trick!
A recent report from Oxford Economics called Sizing the Worldwide Travel Economyhas found that the travel and hospitality review site TripAdvisor influences over 10.3% of all the money spent on the international tourism industry. This 10.3% of the global tourism spend equated to approximately $546 billion in 2017!
Oxford Economics have clearly outlined the method behind their findings, stating that they compared and contrasted user trends from 2004 until 2017, and they then collated this with data taken from the United Nations World Tourism Organization, which has detailed statistics about the tourism industries of 51 countries.
Also in the report, Oxford Economics has estimated that people spent as much as $80 billion more on travel, across the globe in 2017, as a result of TripAdvisor’s influence. So, while it influenced $546 billion of tourism spending (deciding which brands were in the spotlight), it was directly responsible for generating an additional $80 billion! Charlie Ballard, TripAdvisor’s director of strategic insights, had this to say on Oxford Economics’ findings:
“TripAdvisor not only inspires travel, but also causes more travel – in particular by encouraging travellers to take longer trips by showing them how much more there is to see and do.”
It seems that TripAdvisor is not merely a review site that helps users find which hotel to book, or which tour to go on — it actually encourages and inspires users to go on additional trips and to take longer journeys that allow enough time to see all of the best tours, sights, and sounds a travel destination has to offer!
This study goes a little deeper into understanding TripAdvisor’s influence by breaking it down by continent. For example: the tourism market most influenced by TripAdvisor is Europe, where 12.8% of the money spent on travel is directly influenced by the review site. Contrast this with Asia Pacific, where the figure is 9%. In 2017, North America sits somewhere in between, with 10% of its tourism expenditure influenced by TripAdvisor.
Whether it’s 9%, 10%, or 12.8%, these figures are absolutely huge and serve to highlight TripAdvisor’s importance in the tourism industry. If you’re one of the many people attending my Arival workshop on the 25thof September, I look forward to helping you improve your tourism website’s ranking on TripAdvisor. If you’re not attending the Arival workshop and you’d like some practical advice, check out the Improving Your TripAdvisor Rankings blog post TMA published back in May! And if you have any more questions about TripAdvisor, or you’d like to work with us here at Tourism Marketing Agency, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
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