Keywords

1 Introduction

TripAdvisor has revolutionized the travel and tourism industry by becoming the largest online travel guide platform in just a few years (Filieri et al., 2021). For hotels, TripAdvisor serves as a benchmark for their online presence (Xie et al., 2014), and hotel revenues are influenced by reviews on aspects such as staff or facilities (Nieto-García et al., 2019). Furthermore, tourism experiences shared online have a significant impact on the decisions of other travellers (Stoleriu et al., 2019).

Reading user reviews before making a purchase has become a habit for many consumers (Filieri et al., 2021), making e-WOM a crucial source of information for decision-making in the tourism sector (Reyes-Menéndez et al., 2019).

TripAdvisor's growth since its launch in 1999 has been remarkable. In 2006, just six years after it was founded, it already had over 5 million reviews for 220,000 hotels and attractions. By 2013, they surpassed 100 million reviews for 2.5 million businesses. By 2023, they will have more than 859 million reviews for over 8.6 million businesses.

However, in recent years, there has been a noticeable stagnation or even decline in its development as an industry leader. TripAdvisor’s average monthly unique users have been declining in recent years (Dedeoğlu et al., 2020).

Following Filieri et al. (2021), we consider it relevant to analyse the evolution of this influential platform in recent years from both a business and academic perspective and to determine whether it will continue to be a prominent player in the tourism industry in the future.

2 Background: The Success Model of TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor’s great success is based on its ability to develop two production processes that, when combined, create synergies that generate significant added value that is recognized by tourists.

Firstly, it has the ability to capture a large number of user comments and opinions that are useful to those looking for a hotel or restaurant. Second, it uses these opinions to rank the set of hotels and restaurants in a destination, creating a ranking that helps users make decisions in an information-saturated world.

This powerful combination of processes (capture and classification) feeds off each other. The ability to generate reviews and opinions is the result of a mechanism we call the TripAdvisor virtuous circle, where the three players (hotel, customer and TripAdvisor) benefit from each other as long as they all work together. (Illustration 1).

Illustration 1
An illustration of the virtuous circle of Trip Advisor has 3 elements in a clockwise cycle. They are customer, Trip Advisor, and hotel in order.

Sources All diagrams, graphs and tables were prepared by the author

The Virtuous Circle of TripAdvisor.

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TripAdvisor has achieved these impressive figures thanks to the invaluable cooperation of establishments (hotels and restaurants) who have promoted the platform free of charge.

Ensuring that this virtuous circle continues is TripAdvisor's main goal, as can be seen in Illustration 2, which states that TripAdvisor is “the world's largest travel guidance platform”.

Illustration 2
A text box titled, About Tripadvisor. It has a paragraph of text that summarizes Tripadvisor's customer volume, market volume, and its subsidiaries. It also briefs about the company's business and lists 4 U R Ls to websites and apps that its subsidiaries operate under.

Source https://tripadvisor.mediaroom.com/US-about-us (oct-2023)

TripAdvisor and the importance of volume.

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Much of their promotional communication is based on the volume of information available, i.e., the quantity of comments, rather than their quality.

The main objective of this study is to test whether this virtuous circle continues after the pandemic. In order to do this, we want to answer the following question Do users still trust TripAdvisor to publish their comments, opinions and reviews?

3 Methodology

Since 2016, we have been tracking the number of comments and ratings for restaurants and hotels published on both TripAdvisor and Booking in destinations around the world on a monthly basis. All this information (business name, address, number of reviews, overall average rating, etc.) has been stored in a database.

For this study, we analyzed the evolution of the number of comments published on TripAdvisor between 2016 and 2022 in four internationally renowned tourist destinations: Madrid, London, Paris and Rome. By collecting information on all hotels listed on TripAdvisor in these four cities, there was no need for sampling.

4 Results

Table 1 shows the total number of hotel establishments (with at least one review) in the four selected cities.

Table 1 Number of hotels (with reviews)
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Table 2 shows the total number of comments at the end of the year in hotels in the four selected cities.

Table 2 Total number of comments in hotels
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Based on the total number of reviews, and in order to determine the evolution of user participation through their comments, Table 3 was obtained, which shows the annual variation in the number of reviews.

Table 3 Variation (%) in the number of comments
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Finally, the number of reviews received by hotels (on average) by year is shown in Table 4.

Table 4 New comments per hotel (average)
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5 Discussion

If we analyze the data from Table 1 on a graph, we can see that the evolution of the four destinations is very similar over the period analyzed (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3
A 4-line graph of the annual variation in the total number of comments from 2017 to 2022 by 4 countries. Madrid, London, Paris, and Rome drop in order from 26%, 24%,16%, and 15% in 2017 to a range of 0 to 2% by 2021 and rise minimally after to a range between 0.5 and 4%. Values are approximated.

Annual variation (%) in the total number of comments

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A first phase (2017–2019) is characterised by a significant decrease in the annual growth of the number of comments for all destinations.

A second phase (2020–2021) shows an annual variation close to zero for all destinations, due to the lack of activity caused by the pandemic.

A third phase shows a slight recovery in the activity of users posting comments, but it does not exceed 4% per year in any destination.

Finally, looking at the number of new comments per hotel, it can be seen that in Madrid and London, hotels received an average of 31 and 38 comments respectively in 2022, which corresponds to around 3 new comments per month.

In Paris, the figures are lower (19 comments over the year). Finally, the negative annual variation in Rome's data is due to the closure of some hotels with a high number of comments.

6 Causes of the Decline in the Number of Reviews

Encouraging customers to share their reviews has been identified as a major challenge for review sites for several years (Bishop, 2007). Johnson et al. (2012) suggested that in the absence of motivations to share opinions, tourists may receive some form of micropayment or other remuneration for their contributions in the not-too-distant future.

The issue of declining user participation that these authors anticipated is now a reality on TripAdvisor. The causes of this declining engagement can be found in the academic literature:

  1. 1.

    Competition from Google: Gaining a significant number of comments, especially through mobile devices (Singh, 2019).

  2. 2.

    Loss of credibility: TripAdvisor has experienced a loss of credibility due to controversies in the media about fake reviews (Filieri, 2016).

  3. 3.

    The “gift economy” (Kollok, 1999): This concept refers to a situation where individuals contribute without expecting an immediate return. However, for this altruistic collaboration to occur, five motivational conditions are necessary: (i) reciprocity, (ii) appropriate incentives, (iii) efficacy, (iv) knowledge of other users’ needs, and (v) a sense of belonging to a group. The absence of these five motivations would explain the low or non-existent motivation of users to post new comments on TripAdvisor.

7 Conclusion

The success of TripAdvisor in attracting tourists and customers to share their opinions has been undeniable.

However, the credit for the large number of comments is equally distributed among TripAdvisor, hotels, and tourists. We have termed this process of generating comments and opinions the “Virtuous Circle of TripAdvisor,” where the three protagonists (hotel, customer, and TripAdvisor) benefit when all cooperate: (i) the hotel cooperates with TripAdvisor by encouraging customers to write comments, (ii) the customer cooperates with TripAdvisor by writing a comment on its platform, and (iii) TripAdvisor cooperates with the hotel by improving its position in the ranking, provided the comments are positive, current, and numerous.

This paper has provided evidence of the quasi-paralysis of this process of generating new comments.

The reasons for this growing disinterest of users in sharing their opinions on TripAdvisor can be explained by the following factors: (1) Competition from another technological giant like Google, (2) the reputational deterioration of TripAdvisor due to numerous cases of fraudulent reviews in the media and social networks, and (3) the lack of incentives, efficacy, and reciprocity.

To reverse this clear declining trend in the acquisition of opinions and ratings, TripAdvisor will have to react by developing new strategies involving profound changes in its business model and interaction process with users.

Only then can it survive current threats and challenges and continue to be a key player in the tourism industry.