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Hari Nair, Founder & CEO of Holiday IQ
These days, hotels spend more time worrying about reviews on TripAdvisor than on putting in submissions for travel awards. This is because they know the enormous influence travel reviews have on their business.
As Stephen Blyth, Executive Director, Sales & Marketing, Asia Pacific, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, noted, “Two years ago, who would have cared but now there isn’t a single hotel that is not monitoring TripAdvisor.
“We respond to every single response because we know it’s got everything to do with branding and service, and also managing expectations.”
And, according to Abacus International, Asians trust social media more than traditional media and enjoy creating content in comparison to their US counterparts. Worldwide, 58% of travellers are influenced by user reviews, 47% by product reviews and 99% are willing to pay an additional amount in fares after reading a positive user review.
Well, Singapore is about to become the next hot spot for travel reviews. The world’s biggest site for hotel reviews, TripAdvisor, and a site which positions itself as a culturally-conscious TripAdvisor are setting up their regional offices in the city.
TripAdvisor will set up its regional headquarters in Singapore this month and Mr Marc Charron has been appointed Managing Director for APAC.
According to the company, more than half of the traffic to TripAdvisor branded sites comes from outside the US and the appointment of Mr Charron, who started TripAdvisor operations in Europe in 2006, is expected to grow the Asia Pacific share.
Mr Charron will assume responsibility for expanding existing TripAdvisor businesses in India, Japan and Australia, as well as developing new markets in Southeast Asia and Korea.
Mr Steve Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor, said, “Our additional presence and focus in Asia Pacific will allow us to expand our global leadership footprint and position the company to lead in these markets poised for exciting growth in the coming years.”
Over the past five years, TripAdvisor has grown from its original website in the US to a global network of branded sites in 21 countries in 14 different languages. In 2010, TripAdvisor launched websites in Turkey, Denmark, Mexico, Poland, Norway and Australia.
Meanwhile, Holiday IQ, which says it is India’s answer to TripAdvisor but with a local twist, is setting up base in Singapore to expand into the region.
Mr Hari Nair, founder and CEO of Holiday IQ, which gets one million visitors a week, feels it is time for the company to move out of India and apply its hybrid media model designed for emerging markets to the rest of Asia.
Pitching itself as an intelligent holiday planning site, HolidayIQ carries three types of content – own-generated editorial, user generated (about 70% of content) and commercial in the form of supplier listings.
“The mix of these three types of content gives comprehensive content coverage for the user. In India, content requirements are different from US and Europe. We believe people want a blend of content – facts from our own editorial and opinions from user reviews. There is no battle between the two, they complement each other.”
What Holiday IQ does, said Mr Nair, is to give “cultural context” – reviews written by Indians for Indian travellers. “Malaysians or Singaporeans searching for hotels would trust reviews written by other Malaysians and Singaporeans,” he said.
He plans to roll out Holiday IQ in the English-speaking markets of Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Hong Kong initially.
In Holiday IQ’s business model, half of its revenues come from advertising and sponsorship and the other from lead generation and referrals.
“We generate enquiries from travellers and we match these with travel suppliers who are not online but we feel will be the right people to fulfil those requests,” said Mr Nair. “The travel agent then pays for that lead.”
He said the site generates 1,000 enquiries a day.
He said, “There are a lot of traditional players outside the online loop. There are also a lot of people researching online but not buying online. We find that there is growth in people researching online compared to people buying online.
“This is why we decided to build an enquiry model – to enable travellers to connect with longtail and specialist experiences which are harder to find online.”
Mr Nair believes two broad audiences are forming in the online travel market – North American and Europe, and emerging markets in Asia.
“The behaviour is completely different. In the West, there are lots of new applications and trip planning tools. In emerging markets, we haven’t even gotten 1.0 right yet, let alone Web 2.0. We are positioning ourselves in the emerging market and we have the capability to build all the tools.”
Mr Nair is confident Holiday IQ’s enquiry model will work well in other Asian markets. “ India is possibly the most fragmented travel trade market in the world. If we can get travel agents to give us money for the added value we bring, we can do anything,” he laughed.
