TripAdvisor has come up with a clever way of slicing and dicing its content for marketing purposes by naming its Top 10 movie hotels in the U.S., and leveraging its user-generated content to do so.

No, these aren’t the properties with the most-complete roster of on-demand videos for in-room entertainment, but are hotels where some well-known movies — or at least some scenes — were filmed.

So, for example, TripAdvisor, an online travel review site owned by Expedia Inc., recommends Mountain Lake Hotel in Pembroke, Va., where “Dirty Dancing” was filmed.

“Dirty Dancing fans might just have the time of their lives at this property, which featured as the fictitious Kellerman’s Resort in the cult classic movie,” says TripAdvisor. “Nestled in the New River Valley of the Appalachian Mountains, the hotel offers stunning scenery, as well as Dirty Dancing weekends featuring karaoke, dance lessons and a film location tour.”

And, TripAdvisor,without specifying the user’s screen name [we found it] in its press release, quotes hotel reviewer wish2travelmore2 as saying: “We are not Dirty Dancing fanatics, but enjoyed seeing the locations around the property that we recognized from the movie.”

TripAdvisor says travelers recommend Mountain Lake Hotel, with its $220 average nightly rate, for families and outdoor-adventure seekers.

So, for each property named, TripAdvisor leverages its user-generated content to indicate what types of vacations the hotels are suited for and it uses travelers’ reviews for marketing purposes.

Although TripAdvisor rates Mountain Lake Hotel #1 in Pembroke, Va. (population around 1,100), it is the only hotel in the town that’s reviewed and only 55% of TripAdvisor reviewers gave it a thumbs up.

Here is TripAdvisor’s Top 10:

1. The Fairmont San Francisco, (Vertigo, Towering Inferno, Sudden Impact,
   Junior and The Rock)
2. Bellagio Las Vegas, Nevada (Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Thirteen)
3. The Plaza, New York City (North By Northwest, Crocodile Dundee,
The Way We Were, Home Alone 2 and Bride Wars)

4. Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles, (Mission Impossible 3,
The Bodyguard, Spiderman, Wedding Crashers,
Dreamgirls and Pretty in Pink)

5. Beverly Wilshire Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills, Calif. (Pretty Woman,
Beverly Hills Cop I and III, and Bulworth)

6. Renaissance St. Louis Hotel Airport, Saint Louis (Up in the Air)
7. The Roosevelt Hotel, New York City (Maid in Manhattan and Wall Street)
8. Fountainebleau Miami Beach (The Bodyguard, Goldfinger, Scarface)
9. Timberline Lodge, Timberline Lodge, Oregon (The Shining)
10. Mountain Lake Hotel, Pembroke, Va. (Dirty Dancing)

Expedia Inc. President and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made a super prediction today: He expects vacation-rental leader HomeAway, which ran a 30-second TV advertisement during the Super Bowl, to become a public company in 2010 or 2011.

Khosrowshahi, who was speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference 2010 in San Francisco, says Expedia would like to give HomeAway some competition, and Expedia may be able to do so because it sees great potential in two TripAdvisor listings’ businesses: vacation rentals through FlipKey, and Business Listings of bed-and-breakfasts and hotels.

“Listings, for us, is a really interesting business,” Khosrowshahi says. “It is a whole new revenue model.”

It’s interesting that Khosrowshahi envisions competitor HomeAway going public, while he all but ruled out an IPO for TripAdvisor a few weeks ago.

Of course HomeAway and TripAdvisor find themselves in disparate situations.

Homeway is an independent, privately held company, which is funded by Austin Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures and Trident Capital.

In contrast, TripAdvisor is a subidiary of public company Expedia Inc.

How valuable is TripAdvisor to Expedia?

Khosrowshahi says TripAdvisor’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margins are “well north of 50%” and they come in at that number “despite aggressive investments across the globe.”

The Expedia Inc. CEO says TripAdvisor’s margins are superior to those of metasearch companies and other travel players because TripAdvisor provides “higher-qualified” leads to advertisers, who are willing to pay more for them.

In addition, TripAdvisor attracts much of its traffic organically — meaning for free.

Khosrowshahi called TripAdvisor’s margins “spectacular.”

There is no debate about that.

European tour operator Thomas Cook has integrated TripAdvisor reviews into its content areas – but has pledged to retain the old customer reviews it has been collecting over recent years.

The partnership between the two companies sees TripAdvisor reviews added to hotel information throughout the site and other material such as Best Of, Top Tens and traveller photographs added to destination pages on ThomasCook.com in the UK & Ireland.

Thomas Cook is continuing to displaying the reviews from the RealView system it launched in April 2008.

The decision to integrate user generated reviews from TA is an about-turn of sorts by Thomas Cook after RealView was touted as the first time a major tour operator had gone up against the omnipresent, Expedia-owned TripAdvisor with a system of their own.

Speaking at the time, Russell Gould, Thomas Cook UK and Ireland e-commerce director who has since left the company, said:

“As people like us do it properly the reliance on TripAdvisor won’t be as much. The problem with the industry is that it only wants to present positive reviews but our research shows consumers want to see both negative and positive reviews.”

The RealView system was created by BazaarVoice.

Arch rival TUI launched its Cheqqer review and social media system in October 2009, triggering a fair amount of debate as to why so many different review systems were required when the company had its existing review system, TripAdvisor and HolidaysUncovered to provide user content.

Australia-New Zealand online accommodation service Wotif is aiming to unsettle some of the biggest players in the region’s flight search and booking sector with the launch of WotFlight.

The new service launched today and is initially targeting domestic flights in and around Australia, with plans to expand into regional and long-haul flights over time.

Another flight search and booking system wouldn’t ordinarily capture huge amounts of attention, but the pedigree and experience behind the Wotif mothership is likely to make its new rivals in the airfare area take note.

Wotif.com launched in 2000 as an online distressed hotel inventory service, but quickly extended its booking time and global reach to challenge some of the biggest names in the Australasian region.

It is now one very few businesses to dominate a market instead of Expedia-owned TripAdvisor in accommodation rankings on Hitwise, courtesy of its running start and strong brand in Australia.

Wotif is currently almost 2% ahead of TripAdvisor in market share and 4% and 5% ahead of Booking.com and HotelClub respectively.

The new WotFlight brand is being touted as a “natural progression” for the wider group by its CEO Robbie Cookie.

Inevitably the two brands will work closely alongside each other as visitors to the new site will be offered accommodation vouchers on the sister site.

The fighting talk has already started, with brand manager Megan Magill claiming supremacy over content and functionality against its new rival in the flight search sector before the site even launches.

Webjet, Flight Centre and the Australian divisions of Expedia and lastminute.com currently top the Hitwise rankings in the agency categories.

So who owns a review? Product reviews are known to work on travel websites but when a consumer adds a review who owns it?

This isn’t completely clear and different solutions have very different answers.

Take for example Visitor Review from Digital Visitor. For their service (£150/$240 a month), Digital Visitor retain the copyright.

They have a medium sized list of travel company clients including the VisitBritain DMO site (See reviews page).

As confirmed by Digital Visitor, if VisitBritain cease to use the Visitor Review system they can’t take their reviews with them.

Additionally, any other travel website could come along and, having formed a deal with Digital Visitor, use the VisitBritain reviews.

A second example from a similar service (PowerReviews Express) – their system starts at £50/$80 a month. They are very clear who owns the content.

“You own the content. If you are not satisfied for any reason, you can end your contract and stop the service with 30 days notice. You will still own all review content collected up to that date.”

To me this is critically important. If you own the product you need to own the copyright to reviews of those products if those reviews are on your own website.

If you don’t care too much about who owns the copyright then you may as well use a plugin from TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor owns the copyright to all reviews on their system but additionally give you significant marketing exposure. If you are going to give your copyright away you may as well make your content work for you.

Final thought – should the consumer own an aspect of the copyright to their own reviews? It is their review after all?

For example on Ning-powered communities (I run two of them) if a user no longer wishes to be part of the community they can leave and have an option to delete their content. Quite annoying for the community owners but absolutely fair to the community members.

The copyright question will matter over time – right now people are forming contracts with review system providers. Doesn’t seem much consideration is being given to what happens at the end of these contracts.

On the heels of Travelport’s aborted IPO, Expedia Inc. President and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says there are no plans to spin out TripAdvisor into a public company.

Khosrowshahi, who declined to speculate about Travelport’s decision,  said Expedia will continue to be “opportunistic” about TripAdvisor’s status, but “as long as TripAdvisor is executing well, it will remain inside the company.” A financial analyst had asked Khosrowshahi about TripAdvisor’s IPO prospects during Expedia Inc.’s fourth quarter earnings-conference call today.

In playing down the idea of a TripAdvisor IPO, Khosrowshahi says one of the standard justifications for pursuing an IPO is if a business unit is suffering as part of a larger company. And, he says this is certainly not the case with TripAdvisor, which enjoys in-house advertising from the likes of Expedia.com, Hotwire and hotels.com.

And, he believes Expedia’s advertising and media business — as practised on Expedia’s transaction sites as well as on TripAdvisor — is a key differentiator between Expedia and its competitors.

In 2009, Expedia’s advertising and media revenue increased 10% to $311 million, and it accounted for 11% of global revenue.

And 11% of revenue is a lot when you consider that the media business is a high-margin business. In other words, 11% in media revenue translates into a much higher percentage of profit.

Actually, in 2009, Expedia’s transaction websites — including Expedia.com, Hotwire and hotels.com — generated a 21% increase in advertising revenue and the TripAdvisor Media Network — including TripAdvisor, BookingBuddy, CruiseCritic, HolidayWatchdog, SeatGuru and others –contributed a 6% advertising-revenue increase.

Khosrowshahi says Expedia’s advertising and media business acts as a hedge against an expected tougher advertising environment in 2010 when Expedia will have to go out and spend search-engine marketing dollars.

Another benefit of keeping TripAdvisor in-house, Khosrowshahi tells analysts, is that TripAdvisor President and CEO Stephen Kaufer and his management team doesn’t have to be “distracted by calls like this.”

As long as TripAdvisor continues to “execute, it is fine where it is,” Khosrowshahi says.

For the fourth quarter, Expedia Inc. posted a profit of $102.2 million on revenue of $697.5 million, a 12% increase. In the fourth quarter of 2008, Expedia Inc. lost $2.75 billion, largely because of a $3 billion impairment charge.

In Expedia’s hotel business, the company grew its global room nights 23% to 69.7 million in 2009, picking up marketshare.

Khosrowshahi says it’s difficult to pinpoint where Expedia’s hotel marketshare gains are coming from, especially since Priceline and Orbitz Worldwide haven’t reported their fourth quarter numbers yet.

He believes the marketshare gains are coming primarily from offline agencies, but some of it could be coming from OTAs, as well.

In the competition with Booking.com in Europe, Khosrowshahi says Expedia Inc. added 9,000 agency-model hotels in Europe in 2009, bringing the total to around 16,000, and expects to add around another 9,000-10,000 in 2010.

With Venere in the fold, 2009 was all about getting infrastructure and inventory in place, and in 2010 Expedia is confident it will start driving demand for hotels through tactics such as search engine optimization and search-engine marketing, Khosrowshahi says.

Khosrowshahi says Spain, where Expedia’s hotel penetration has been a bit low, and eastern Europe, present substantial growth opportunities for the company’s hotel business.

South African Tourism, anxious to promote the destination as more than a football venue in anticipation of the World Cup in June, entered into what it describes as “a six-figure” advertising deal with TripAdvisor on its English-language websites, the national tourism agency says.

The “South Africa: The Ultimate Experience” campaign combines TripAdvisor user reviews for places like Cango Wildlife Ranch with promotional videos, photos, forums and text ads from companies like Expedia.com, hotels.com and Booking.com.

South Africa Tourism says the campaign is targeting travelers from the U.K., U.S., Australia, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. There are three tabs — Adventure and Wildlife, Culture and Nature, and Entertainment and Leisure — in the banner ad and each tab features user-generated content about the top-rated attractions in each category, the DMO says.

With co-branded banner ads throughout TripAdvisor’s English-language websites, the campaign drives trip-planning consumers to the South Africa Tourism website as well as to booking sites.

As part of the deal, the South Africa Tourism website has a TripAdvisor review widget on the DMO’s accommodation pages, and this drives traffic back to TripAdvisor. Here is what the widget, which has an ad on top touting a contest to win a trip to the World Cup,  looks like:

South Africa tourism says the deal with TripAdvisor meshes well with its global marketing strategy because it recognizes the value of user-generated content and the online environment for trip-planning.

Categorisation of online travel sites used to be easy. Either a site was transactional or non-transactional.

Either it made its money negotiating with suppliers for inventory and charging customer credit cards or it made its money from advertising and clicks through funnelling consumers from one place to the other.

In a post Meta-search vs Online Travel Agents: The Three Main Differences and Why They Matter, I mentioned that one of the major differences between an OTA (transaction site) and a meta-search site (non-transaction site) is that the transactional sites try to build up a unique product set – inventory (or inventory combinations) that no one else has – whereas the non-transactional meta-search company is focused on pointing to product that by definition is not unique as it is maintained by someone else.

A clear distinction that made it easier for customers and companies within the industry to know who was doing what and (in the case of companies) how to operate together.

However in late-2009 the distinction between the two categories began falling apart with non-transactional sites building unique product offerings.

Here are six theoretically non-transactional sites now operating unique product models.

Kayak Private Sale

• Dennis Schaal has been tracking the ins and outs of the launch of Kayak Private Sale – efforts by the US’s number one metasearch company Kayak to launch exclusively negotiated deals. My own thoughts on the program are here: Zero  Percenter No More.

TripAdvisor

• In November 2009, TripAdvisor announced the launch of TripAdvisor Busness Listings. Under this model TA will charge properties $600 or more to add direct to property contact details (email, URL, phone) with the aim of driving direct to property sales rather and sales through third party advertisers. TripAdvisor have not said it yet but I think it is only a matter of time before they start carrying rates and specials.

Voyageprive and Jetsetter

• Hotel Blogs recently let me know about a French company VoyagePrive. Now operating in a number of countries, VP is a referral only travel “club” that points members in the direction of deals only available on VP. To get into the club you have to be invited by a member. Then VP will send out to the members deals that have be privately sourced from suppliers. Deals open for only 72 hours.
• Jetsetter is a similar model. Created by former Kayak VP Drew Patterson, Jetsetter has also taken the referral-only club with limited time period deal approach. More about in previous Tnooz articles.

DealBase

• I first came across DealBase at the PhoCusWright Travel Innovator Summit in 2008 (Dealbase and demo presentation) and was one of my picks for the top six at that conference. Hotels directly load deals onto DealBase which are in turn then checked by the DealBase team for quality of the deal. The deals are coming from the supplier but the checking is being done by the distributor which DealBase hope will result in unique product.

TotalTravel

• Australian based TotalTravel (now owned by Yahoo7 – a JV in Australia between Yahoo! and a TV network) started as an accommodation listing site (using the TripAdvisor Business Listing model years before TA launched it). Hotels in targeted destinations would get a base listing for free with paid upgrades for placement and promotion. Those enhanced placement options include the ability to promote specific (and at times unique) deals to the TotalTravel system.

The blurring of the clear distinction between the companies that sell and that companies that help the companies that sell has important consequences for the industry.

As previously mentioned, the OTAs have built up their unique product capabilities behind an expensive infrastructure of supplier management, merchandising and customer care teams.

The non-transactions sites are trying to replicate the unique product set without the costs. I don’t think they can replicate the same deal potential without the cost.

Finding a good deal is hard (time consuming and costly). Targeting it at the right consumers is even harder (more time, a little less costly).

If they can – and I doubt it – then it will push the OTAs to also rethink their models and costs – causing a true industry revolution.

TripAdvisor launched its flight metasearch engine almost a year ago to the day in the US, triggering much chattering in the industry as to whether it could successfully integrate it into its existing product.

A UK version was finally launched in October 2009 in what was a frenetic period for US-based engines with Travelzoo’s Fly.com also unveiling its version for the Brits almost simultaneously.

Officials refuse to give away any hard data concerning the product, only to say they are “very happy” with progress so far and add that 2010 will be “strong” overall for TripAdvisor Flights.

“Millions of travelers in the U.S use our award winning meta search product, and our monthly search volumes continue to increase.”

One area that might surprise many is that the international rollout of the flight engine has been limited so far to the US and the UK.

Although some argue launching international versions of complex products such as metasearch engines is notoriously difficult, officials at the UK’s Skyscanner have quietly been launching international versions at a rapid rate in recent years.

Once again, TripAdvisor is tight-lipped about where it might unleash flight meta next across its portfolio of country sites, saying that for the time being its “classic” version – directing visitors to partner sites for results – remains in places such as France and Germany.

When the product was originally unveiled, officials admitted they had been working on it for around a year and said it was probably the most significant launch since the review service appeared in the early 2000s.

A string of features have been added since February 2009, officials say, including AirWatch alerts and a Fees Estimator tool.

The product’s success, however, will be measured in the long-term by how much it has impacted on those elsewhere in the marketplace.

Many believed having the user review system to piggyback on would give TripAdvisor a strong advantage over the likes of Kayak in international markets (a similar situation to Fly.com and its ability to buddy up with Travelzoo).

UPDATE: Within two hours of this post appearing, TripAdvisor curiously pulled both of the video clips from YouTube. The clips also featured in the company’s own YouTube channel.

TripAdvisor says it “found out” the video was on YouTube and took it down. The clip wasn’t ready yet and hadn’t gone through the full vetting process, a spokesman says. Amazingly a production person in TripAdvisor had posted in prematurely.

TripAdvisor is either on a recruitment drive or has turned into one of those companies that likes to create quirky and edgy videos to show off how, err, quirky and edgy it is.

Or both.

The human resources video from the folk at TripAdvisor was uploaded to YouTube this week and paints a heartwarmingly upbeat picture of life at work for the user review giant and its string of subsidiaries.

The five-minute clip (thankfully there is also 30-second version) features all manner of staffers from chief executive Stephen Kaufer and advertising boss Robin Ingle to business development director Nathan Clapton and a whole host of engineers and marketing people.

No sign of the Snarky Owl.

User review giant TripAdvisor will have a few worries on its mind if Google follows through on its threat to pull out of China following a row over cyber attacks on government protestors.

Tnooz has learned the TripAdvisor-DaoDao business in China currently gets around a third of all its search engine traffic just from Google.

Google has threatened to reverse its previous decision to block sites and information banned by the Chinese government, a move which effectively could lead Google.cn being blocked at the touch of a button.

TripAdvisor general manager in China, Hao Wu, says the company is watching developments closely but has no sense at this stage which way the row is likely to go.

The Expedia-owned business was always going to be one of the big travel sites under threat as it relies to heavily on and performs well in natural search through Google.

Wu says:

“If Google is able to redirect Google.cn users and advertisers to Google.com and Google.com’s access is not noticeably impacted, then the immediate impact to our biz would be minimal.

“In the long term, if Google completely retreats from China, then it’d be worrisome for us in China since our SEM cost will likely go up as Baidu dominates the market.”

Another “key component”, Wu explains, is TripAdvisor’s use of Google Maps across much of the hotel pages on the site .

TripAdvisor officially launched DaoDao (Chinese variation of the brand) in April 2009 following a six-month beta test in the country.

The division has grown far quicker than other TripAdvisor country brands  around the world (around 50 employees) due to the complex nature of the business and protocols.

Wu says there are a number of options in the long term, including using over search players such Sohu and Ten Cent QQ, but both sites are too small to challenge Baidu, the country’s biggest search engine.

A TripAdvisor deal to place its facilitated-hotel-search offering, TripAdvisor Check Rates, as well as deals from sister Expedia Inc. company BookingBuddy on Yahoo Travel expands TripAdvisor’s advertising network, but can’t be welcome news for Travelocity or deal-publisher Shermans Travel.

Travelocity powers air, car, hotels and cruises on Yahoo Travel, but has seen its stature on Yahoo Travel diminish over the years. At one point, Yahoo Travel displaced Travelocity as its default for travel search and gave priority instead to Yahoo’s metasearch unit, FareChase, until Yahoo shuttered FareChase, as a non-core business, early last year.

Now, Travelocity’s air, car, hotel and cruise search appears near the top of the Yahoo Travel homepage, but right beneath it are BookingBuddy deals and a portal into TripAdvisor Check Rates.

From the Yahoo Travel homepage, users can click on destination photos, travel guides and top destinations and land on hotel pages, where they can access TripAdvisor Check Rates. With this offering from TripAdvisor, consumers can check booking engines from multiple online travel agencies — including, ironically, Travelocity — and suppliers, with their search engines opening in individual windows.

In another twist, take a look at Travelocity’s facilitated search product from its IgoUgo unit:

At the bottom of hotel displays from Travelocity on Yahoo Travel you’ll find banner ads from IgoUgo, which look like the following:

Thus, Yahoo Travel features facilitated search from TripAdvisor Check Rates, but also has ads from a competing product, IgoUgo, beneath Travelocity’s hotel displays on Yahoo Travel.

Of course, this is not unheard of in the incestuous world of travel marketing, but eyebrow-raising just the same.

In addition, the BookingBuddy deals on the top-right of the Yahoo Travel homepage replace the product that Shermans Travel previously furnished, according to BookingBuddy.

A Yahoo spokeswoman says “the agreement with TripAdvisor does not displace Travelocity,” adding that some pages have links to IgoUgo hotel reviews as an additional travel-planning resource for Yahoo Travel visitors.

Both TripAdvisor and BookingBuddy are part of Expedia, and their new prominence on Yahoo Travel is a plus for Expedia Inc.’s  advertisers as their reach has now been expanded beyond the 36-million visitor TripAdvisor Media Network.

Yahoo and TripAdvisor wouldn’t release details of the new agreement, which began Jan. 1,  other than to say that it involves the U.S. market only, and is a revenue-sharing arrangement.

AirFareWatchdog has relaunched its website as it looks to push into new markets outside of the US including a dedicated version for UK travellers.

The TripAdvisor-owned brand launched five years ago and was snapped up by the Expedia Inc powerhouse in 2007 as part of its wider strategy to develop additional brands through the Smarter Travel Media division.

The new AirFarewatchdog site was cleaned up for the New Year with a simpler user interface, says founder George Hobica.

The site works by listing fares and promotion codes for tickets on a range of airlines. Users can book tickets when referred to sister brand Booking Buddy or with airline.

Hobica admits the AirFareWatchdog brand is “virtually unknown” in the UK but commands around 1 million unique users a month in the US.

The site also a healthy email newsletter service with 900,000 subscribers.

The current service is manually operated, Hobica says, with individual fares and deals hand-picked by AirFareWatchdog to keep with its “advisory service” ethos.

TripAdvisor operates a suite of unbranded sites including SeatGuru, FlipKey, Travelpod, Cruise Critic, Virtual Tourist and Travel Library.

A number have since had regional extensions added such as Cruise Critic UK.

Jay Karen, the president and CEO of the 2000-member Professional Association of Innkeepers International, acknowledges that there are mixed feelings among bed & breakfast owners over the fees for TripAdvisor’s new Business Listings, but he thinks owners should “throw $300 [the promotional rate] at this.”

For the first time, beginning Jan. 4, innkeepers and hotels can list their URLs, phone numbers and e-mails for a flat annual fee within their property displays on TripAdvisor so consumers can navigate directly to the properties’ websites.

The annual fee is $600 for properties with 10 rooms or less — meaning most B&Bs — but it is half that price for properties which sign up in by the end of January 2010.

TripAdvisor President and CEO Stephen Kaufer appeared at the PAII’s New England Innkeeping Show in Nashua, N.H., Nov. 17, on the day the Business Listings program was announced.

Karen, who has lobbied TripAdvisor since November 2008 for direct listings, thinks TripAdvisor may take in $1.5 million from the program in the first year if 3,000 of the roughly 16,000 U.S. B&Bs sign on at an average fee of $500.

And, that $1.5 million counts just U.S.-based B&Bs. TripAdvisor’s new advertising program may turn into a much larger revenue stream because it will be available to properties on all of its global websites.

Here are details about the TripAdvisor U.K. program, for instance.

Karen says there are “a lot of mixed feelings about the price tag” since most innkeepers don’t spend $600 annually to advertise with one vendor. Many will take a wait-and-see attitude toward the program, he says.

But Karen thinks it is a worthwhile program, especially at the $300 introductory rate.

Introducing URLs, phone numbers and e-mails will enable properties for the first time to eliminate the guesswork and track how much website traffic they are getting from TripAdvisor, Karen says.

Today, consumers might use an intermediary to book a property on TripAdvisor, and some may open another browser and search for the inn, but the booking may get lost along the way, Karen says.

With the direct links, “you can make a judgment about the value of TripAdvisor if you know that 30% of your traffic is from TripAdvisor,” Karen says.

TripAdvisor states that direct contact lisings  will be placed, “At the top of your hotel page under your property address and above the Check Rates box. They will appear above the fold.”

But, one gripe that Karen has with the program’s implementation is that it’s his understanding that the direct contact information will not be given any special prominence within the property display on TripAdvisor.

In other words, the font is expected to look the same as the address listing here for the Quality Inn Northlake in Atlanta, Ga.

Karen would have rather seen the Business Listing say something like “Go to the website” or other terminology to give the direct contact information more punch.

Still, he thinks Business Listings will be “worthwhile” for B&Bs, especially at the introductory rate, and if the program works out well for inns and TripAdvisor, then perhaps the PAII and other inns will have more influence with TripAdvisor.

Says Karen: “My hope is that they will listen to us even more.”

FamilyHolidays would be yet another package holiday-focused website cluttering up the internet if it wasn’t for a rather nice twist on the user experience for searching and booking complicated products.

The site lets users search for flights and hotels as individual components on one side of its search screen while also allowing at the same time for tailor made deals to similar destinations and dates on the other side of the window.

The functionality keeps users on the same page as they add different elements into a trip such as car hire and transit, before heading off to the checkout section of the site.

The two search methods can be carried out simultaneously right up to booking point.

Regulatory issues for UK users – where the customer based is expected to be initially – are handled by an ATOL bond for package holidays (FamilyHolidays acts as an agent) and failure protection insurance for bundled deals.

Much of the functionality for the rest of the site is modelled on the standard search and booking process familiar with users across the internet, as well as pages for destinations guides and maps.

The site is the latest offering from Chris Clarkson and Chris Brown who, after making their fortune selling HolidayWatchdog to TripAdvisor in January 2008, have since launched Sunshine.co.uk and now Familyholidays.co.uk.