SarahThe New Tripadvisor layout was released!
Update 5.02.2019: I am now verified to post links! And even better – I have a link for you to request this option too! This is what brought me the link function finally after numerous (unanswered) emails to TripAdvisor!
Yesterday, on November 13th, 2018, TripAdvisor has released their completely overhauled layout. It now features a “smart feed” that reminds many of their Facebook feed.
I have been waiting for this release for weeks now and have already told you about it.
According to news publications, this is exactly where the new TripAdvisor is heading – becoming “the Facebook for Travelers”. And while they have a lot to bring to the table, there is also quite a few negative voices out there as well!
So let’s have a look – what does the new TripAdvisor do and how big is its potential?
Table of Contents
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The features of the new TripAdvisor
As you can see, the layout of the new TripAdvisor really looks much more like a social network now!
The main area is used to show your “smart feed” – with travel inspiration from all the people that you follow. So you can personalize this feed by following travel accounts you trust (I’ll recommend a few later) and friends and family!
To the left you can see a user profile column and the option to share your travel advice.
To the right is a number of suggested users – this can be big accounts as well as your facebook friends!
The Smart Feed
The smart feed of the new TripAdvisor can contain the following items:
- Photos
- Videos
- Reviews
- Trips (a collection of places)
- Links (yazzz, you can post blog post links with a preview!)
However, the “normal user” can only post reviews, trips and photos currently – you need to be manually approved for videos and links (scroll down to find out more)
Fun Fact: I tried to contact TripAdvisor numerous times to get into the closed beta during autum last year.
But apparently they were either contacted by TripAdvisor themselves or simply signed up to a list lying on the TripAdvisor trade fair booth at TravelCon. A lot of the selected beta testers never used the platform – however, some are active and share great content!
Your user Profile
Your user profiles shows three prominent numbers: Contributions, Followers and Followings.
Yes, the numbers game has begun on TripAdvisor as well. Let’s see where this will lead – more on that later. Contributions is actually a joint number: each photo, video, review, trip or forum post is one contribution! That is why there is accounts with 10,000s of contributions – they are “forum nerds” (and no, this is not negative at all – I consider myself a nerd as well)
You can also add a title picture and a profile picture. The profile picture is round while the title picture is rectangular and slim. I found that my Youtube channel cover seemed to work perfectly regarding the size.
There is a unique username with an @ – in my case @fernwehsarah of course. Above it, you can set an additional name that does not have to be unique. I could also use “Travel Blogger” there. (Mine is currently “Fernwehsarah | Travel Blog“). It is basically the same concept we know from Instagram.
Last but not least you can add your location, a link to your website and a description of 160 words.
As you can see, you can also check a users profile for their individual pieces of content by tabs: their trips, photos, videos, reviews, links and forum entries. And you can also check their badges and a travel map where you can enter all the locations they have been. The last two options send you to a new tab as they were already part of “the old Tripadvisor”.
Get Verified to use Links and videos!
Yep, after weeks of waiting (and plenty of unanswered emails to various TripAdvisor emails…even phone calls to the US…) I now can post links and videos on TripAdvisor!
And you (possibly) can too!
The option to post links and videos was initially thought to be for everyone, but is currently still only open to selected news outlets, bloggers and influencers.
It is manually approved – the conditions are unclear though. I signed up as “Influencer” and filled links to my blog, my Instagram and my Twitter account. In the process, they also ask you for your combined social media following – I am not sure if there is a limit though!
So, but now let’s give you the link: Apply for links and videos on TripAdvisor (just click!)
It’s a Google Sheet and first looked not real to me. But after a few hours I got a mail from TripAdvisor that I can now use links and videos. (Sadly, it was not true and I had to pestle them for another week and in the end, refilled the form. When I was not really believing into it anymore, one hour after filling it a second time IT WORKED FINALLY!)
I will keep you updated if this is a viable traffic source for bloggers – but I heard that people start seeing traffic from it!
Read: How To Start A Blog In 10 Simple Steps – Blogging For Beginners
Video walk-through of the new TripAdvisor
And since some of this stuff is hard to describe, I also screen recorded a video showing the new functions!
Why this could be “The Next Big Thing” for Travel Influencers and Bloggers
At the moment, no one can really know if the new TripAdvisor will be a big hit like Instagram a few years ago or if it will fail like Google Plus. Social media is a tough world and it is hard to predict.
But there is a few reasons, why this could indeed be THE NEXT BIG THING for Travel Bloggers and Influencers.
Reason #1: TripAdvisor has a gigantic network already
This is probably their biggest bonus: they already have all the user and don’t have to find them first. If you ever created a TripAdvisor profile to review a place – you already have your account. No choice!
There is also a lot of brands (hotels, tour agents,…) that are using TripAdvisor as an important customer aquisition tool. So they will likely use this free marketing channel and actively contribute to its growth.
Reason #2: Travel is an incredible niche
If you ever thought about blogging, on of the first advice that you will find is that you need to “niche down”. What it means is that your users come to you to find a certain type of content and that is also what they get.
Thus, a network where the algorithm does not have to sort your interests first (travel, fashion, beauty, fitness,… you get the concept) naturally is more appealing to the user.
And last but not least: Travel is a growing market. People are interested in traveling and they spend a significant amount of money on it. So this is why TripAdvisor can actually invest in this network A LOT.
Reason #3: People mistrust Facebook/Instagram
The new TripAdvisor was also released at an ideal timing: People are getting off Facebook and are increasingly annoyed with Instagram.
Click to read: Is Instagram dead and is it time to move away?
And the big Facebook/Instagram Daddy has also lost their users trust due to the recent scandals and data security topics. TripAdvisor does not have this problem – they are clean, scandal-free and loved by their users. So chances are, people are going to move their travel experiences to the new TripAdvisor and their social smart feed.
Who to follow on the new TripAdvisor
So let’s see who is already on the platform with some cool content! Most of the big accounts right now where part of the closed beta already (everyone with a green tick mark definitely was).
If you want to fill your smart feed with some awesome curated stuff, follow those accounts:
- DameTraveler
- The Points Guy
- Girl Eat World
- Passion Passport
- The Planet D
- We Are Travel Girls
- A Luxury Travel Blog
- Travel Babbo
- The Blonde Nomads
- The Five Foot Traveler
- Julia Around The World
- Salt In Our Hair
- Angel Bengal (a travel cat!)
- Fernwehsarah (OF COURSE I am tooting my own horn! 🙂 )
Surprisingly absent is Lonely Planet. They were one of the few accounts that was even mentioned in TripAdvisors press release from September but have not used their profile or gained a significant amount of followers so far. Let’s see what happens in the future – at the time of writing, even TripAdvisor itself had less than 70k followers.
Negative critics regarding the New TripAdvisor
So, everything golden with the new TripAdvisor Social Media attempts?
Well, not exactly. While I think this network has the potential to be an awesome ressource for both inspiration as well as information, there are a few things they need to be careful about.
Currently their own forum community is not really happy with the look and concept. There seem to be a lot of glitches and bugs regarding the trip features, the badges and the travel map. A lot of the “old users” don’t like that there is no option “to go private” and stop people from following you.
And some are also annoyed by the two-tier system where functions like the verification and the option to post links and videos are only available to a few.
Particularly the “veterans” with a contribution level 6 at Tripadvisor (the highest ones) feel left behind by TripAdvisor. Since they are an incredible ressource to the information part of this network, TripAdvisor has to be careful to listen to them and not leave them behind.
Last but not least, TripAdvisor does not give any explanation anywhere how to use the new features. Currently some are really hidden and a bit frustrating to use.
What’s Your opinion on the new Tripadvisor?
All in all I think they have done a fantastic job with the direction the new TripAdvisor is going.
But it might have been smarter to wait a little longer to go public and fix a few things before. It currently looks a bit premature and you can see that they did not carefully select their closed-beta user. And they have not listened to some of the feedback they got from some of the active testers as you can easily see in the Support forum.
The next weeks will tell if they will be the next Facebook for Travel or rather the next Google Plus.
What is your opinion? Do you like the new TripAdvisor? Have you completed your profile already and how are you going to use it? And: HAVE YOU FOLLOWED ME ALREADY??? Just kidding. No, not kidding. Follow me on TripAdvisor! 🙂
Use the poll and leave me a comment – this topic is HOT!
Thanks for this Sarah! I’ve been trying to figure out how people were posting links and your article is the only place I have found some explanation.
I agree, this could be a huge game changer for us travel bloggers. I’m trying to get the hang of it early on, but it’s frustrating that we can’t post links or videos like some other people can. We’ll have to just see how it plays out 🙂
I also hope that this feature will be available soon to everyone! So far after a week the network is only slowly growing but I already gained more followers than I EVER got in one week on Instagram! I put a lot of effort into creating trips and writing reviews and I really hope this will continue to work!
Hi Sarah – I now have included the link to the document that gave me the option to get links and videos! Hope it helps you!!!
Thanks very much for this information, Sarah. I’ve been wanting to learn more about the changes and your post is the first thing I’ve found that has good information! I feel more ready to ramp up my Trip Advisor game now 🙂
Hi Lesley – thanks a lot for your kind words! Glad to hear that the article helps you – let me know if you have any further questions!
Hi Lesley – glad to hear this article helped you with the new TripAdvisor! Let me know if you have any problems or questions about it!
I am one of those being left behind by TA, it feels like TA is only giving verified ticks to those “famous people” instead of those who had contributed for many years. I have a million viewers already and compared to those with ticks has less than 100k viewers – seriously TA is going to make me stop reviewing and will do it on Google reviews instead… Le sigh!
Yeah they totally need to work on this verification issue! I am not verified as well and thus cant share any posts or videos. Currently only users from the beta phase are verified. Most of them aren’t famous thus. It seems there was simply a list on Travelcon in London were you put down your name and boom, they made you beta tester. Not a smart way to choose them in my opinion as many of them never used any function or posted reviews. Let’s hope they’ll improve it soon!
We’re beta testers and didn’t put our name down on a list, we were contacted directly by TA who were keen for us to join
Hi Suze, thanks for the information – I will correct the article! Got this info from another girl who was verified. I am meanwhile still fighting for links- although I already have 2.5k followers on TripAdvisor 😀
Hey Sarah!
This is super helpful. I’ve been wondering how some people have links 🙂
I just tried to click on the Google sheet link that you’ve posted here but I got a message that it’s no longer available.
Do you have an updated link? Thanks a lot!
Hi! Unfortunately, the sheet seems to be offline. I’ll ask someone I know from TripAdvisor how they handle it now! Thanks for mentioning this to me so that I can soon update the link or remove it at least!