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Separating wheat from chaff in cyberspace
By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, May 4, 2003
Four years ago, Stephen Kaufer was planning a vacation to Mexico and looking on the Web for information about where to go, what to see, and where to stay. ''I tried Google, Alta Vista, everything,'' Kaufer said. ''I was buried with information, but I couldn't find what I needed.''
So Kaufer launched Needham-based TripAdvisor.com to help people find that missing useful travel information on the Web. Instead of wading through tons of listings for sites that make every destination sound like Shangri-La, Kaufer's website takes you right to guidebooks, newspaper articles, and user reviews with a point of view. ''We don't go to any of these places and actually stay there,'' Kaufer said. ''It's all information available on the Web, but heaven help you if you try to find it yourself.''
I ran into that very problem recently planning a trip to Orlando, Fla. It was easy enough to check out Disney's website, but when I began looking for other things to do and places to stay, I was simply overwhelmed by what my Web searches were yielding. It took me nearly 45 minutes of skipping from one site to another before I realized I wasn't getting anywhere fast.
TripAdvisor makes your search easy. Punch in Orlando, for example, and you're delivered to a page that offers links to eight guidebook excerpts on the city, 156 newspaper articles, and 621 individual user reviews. Click on Orlando attractions, and you're taken to a page with links to more guidebook excerpts and all of the theme parks. There are additional links for golf courses, tours, museums, sightseeing, dining out, shopping, and weekend excursions to nearby sites -- virtually anything you need to start planning a trip. You can also sign up for an e-mail newsletter that lets you know when new information on Orlando comes in.
TripAdvisor also offers a hotel popularity index for your destination. It's not exhaustive (cheap places are not prevalent), and it's a bit of a mystery how user reviews, guidebook comments, and Web reviews are blended and weighed to yield rankings, but it's provocative and informative.
For Boston, 99 hotels were listed. The Boston Omni Parker House received the top ranking, followed by XV Beacon, the Seaport Hotel, Wyndham Boston, and the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common. The Four Seasons, often ranked as one of the best, if not the best, hotel in the city, came in seventh. Rankings change frequently. The Seaport Hotel, hardly the best location for a leisure traveler to Boston, topped the rankings just a couple of days before the Parker House took over the top spot.
TripAdvisor has a lot of room to grow. It offers detailed information on the United States, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Most of the regions offer overviews that progressively let you get more detailed in your planning. Understanding that more and more Americans are traveling closer to home these days, the TripAdvisor just launched a weekend getaway e-mail service, offering recipients information on trips 25 to 300 miles from their ZIP code. Surprisingly, the most popular offering on the website is the often anonymous user reviews, Kaufer said. Visitors gravitate to the capsule opinions of hotels, attractions, and airlines that individual travelers submit on their own. ''I'm not sure why people like to submit them,'' Kaufer said, noting that no incentive is offered. ''The best I can guess is that a large segment of the traveling public likes to express opinions that will reach 3 million people'' -- that's the number of unique site visits each month.
The user reviews range all over the map. Under the Boston heading, for example, the comments of a reviewer from Glasgow on the Boston Park Plaza Hotel were headlined ''Hell on Earth,'' while a reviewer from La Jolla, Calif., called the Colonnade ''Beantown Bliss.'' A reviewer from Fargo, N.D., advised caution in dealing with Discover Boston Trolley Tours, since the waits for a ride were much longer than advertised.
All of TripAdvisor's information is free. Kaufer said the privately held company is forecasting more than $15 million in revenue for this year and 50 percent pretax profit margins. It makes that money from the hotel and airline booking sites such as Orbitz and Expedia that TripAdvisor visitors can click to once they have decided where they want to go.
Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.
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