Tripadvisor to be spun off in wake of Google

[Whitey]

Expedia's move could be shrewd considering Google is aiming squarely at TripAdvisor's business. Over the past few months, Google has been emphasizing its search product, "Places." Like TripAdvisor, it shows hotel reviews and directs users to sites where they can book rooms, among other things. As Google has made changes to the way it displays search results, TripAdvisor's traffic has declined, CEO Stephen Kaufer has said. Indeed, Comscore data shows that, since November, TripAdvisor's page views have fallen from the year-earlier number.

And Google's pending purchase of travel search firm ITA Software, approved by antitrust authorities Friday, means it will soon offer its own travel search. Afterward, there may be little need to click through to other travel search sites like TripAdvisor.


[online.wsj.com...]
Are large OTA's about to become extinct or can they co-exist with Google?

Is Google going to push harder to pick up direct business from the principles in this and other verticals?

Some watershed questions .... any thoughts?

[CainIV]

Wow, scary stuff. I think that Google will push until they have a 1:1 relationship with the service or product provider. They will likely scrape reviews from other websites until they have enough reviews built up in their own system to look more legitimate, and then will try and squeeze OTA's right off of the map.

[Whitey]

There were some rumours afloat that Google is negotiating direct deals with hotels : [tnooz.com...]

Maybe they want to be the new Expedia , in the same was as Microsoft set up Expedia over 10 years ago.

Here's an interesting comment from the UK

The concern is whether Google can use its web-search monopoly to build another monopoly, not only in the flight-search market but also in any other vertical search market. [theregister.co.uk...]

Cain - i think your concerns may be described in the above

[walkman]

Bye bye travel sites.

[travelin cat]

Bye bye travel sites.

Nonsense.

Google will have to keep existing travel sites in the serps to avoid the ongoing possibility of lawsuits:

The department said that Google will also be required to provide mandatory arbitration under certain circumstances and provide for a formal reporting mechanism for complainants if Google acts in an unfair manner.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/April/11-at-445.html

[walkman]

"Google will have to keep existing travel sites in the serps to avoid the ongoing possibility of lawsuits"

Fine. How's page 4512 for you after google fills the rest with its own links?

[Whitey]

Nonsense

I don't think they will be obliged to keep OTA's in business if they can demonstrate that travel principles still are able to compete effectively. In any event they can play a great game with the authorities and the worst that can happen is that they spin off this business if the Fed cause them to, at a massive profit.

in any event , it's all about the margins and efficiency in the distribution cycle. If the OTA's can't survive, there's nothing to defend any more.

The concern of the Fed is if this flows through to other business' and i believe it will. The demise of directories aka Yellow Pages ; Yelp is close to completion - why list in a directory that relies on Google, when Google does it.

TripAdvisor seems to fall into that category - but they are going to have one heck of a story to tell the people when they try to sell those shares ( if they do ).

[LifeinAsia]

Bye bye travel sites.

I have a different view. I see HUGE potential for Google to eliminate the GDS [en.wikipedia.org] dinosaurs, should they decide to go in that direction.

Google has the potential and infrastructure (and smart developers) to create its own GDS. They simultaneously develop an API for use by suppliers and distributors. Think Google Maps expanded to the travel industry with mashups that allow reservations on any travel-related sites. It's basically taking the AdWords/AdSense relationship and applying it to the travel industry- "advertisers" (hotels, airlines, car rental companies, theme parks, etc.) sell their inventory through "publishers" (Google, travel sites, blogs, visitor & convention bureaus, etc.).

[mromero]

Have you guys looked at Mr. Sullivan's research on G inserting hotel prices in search results?

[Whitey]

I have a different view. I see HUGE potential for Google

I see this to - Google will provide all the tools that OTA's currently do and much more to sell more advertising . The problem is they are so powerful in distribution.

Surely they will be tempted by other forms of monentization though by being an OTA themselves.

[LifeinAsia]

Surely they will be tempted by other forms of monentization though by being an OTA themselves.

No different from the current situation with Expedia, Orbitz, Hotels.com, etc.- they all have affiliate programs.

[scooterdude]

legislation

at least, Europe , USA

[BillyS]

Nonsense... will never happen.

[Whitey]

Nonsense... will never happen.

I wasn't 100% sure what you were referring to , but I'll ask the question - why not?

[Tropical Island]

This is a very interesting development for small business owners who have been unfairly penalized by high bid amounts in AdWords.

When many of our bids went north of $1 each we looked for other solutions to bring traffic to our B&B.

One route was TripAdvisor & FlipKey. I have to say it's been a great success. Not only are we receiving steady traffic from both of them but due to the reviews associated with the listings the requests are often pre-sold.

Google's entry into this market can only mean increased costs.