Kayak just relaunched TravelPost as a new hotel metasearch site. Congrats to the TravelPost team. We know from first hand experience how hard it is to launch a site like this! We have a lot of respect for the developers, product managers, business development people that made it happen.
However, it seems that their CEO, Steve Hafner, has learned a few lessons from Helicopter Ben Bernanke: writing checks that don’t cash!
After reading their press release, I find it interesting how they’ve decided to launch with:
- Unsubstantiated claim of “most comprehensive”: They claim to be the “most comprehensive hotel information site on the Web.” Let me indulge in a little “mine is bigger than yours” action for a moment. How is your 140,000 Worldwide hotels and 200 Websites searched, more comprehensive than UpTake’s 175,000 U.S. accommodations, 600,000 U.S. attractions, from over 5000 Websites? Check your facts pleez.
- Gratuitous bashing TripAdvisor and other review sites: From the press release: “Consumers and hoteliers are woefully underserved by websites like TripAdvisor.com, who appear to care more about their bottom lines than providing relevant content and a seamless experience.” Last I checked, hotel review metasearch means aggregating reviews from other sites. So how does bashing other sites help you get access to the most reviews? Apparently Steve Hafner, CEO of Kayak, values the PR buzz from throwing TripAdvisor under the bus rather than asking TripAdvisor to syndicate their reviews. By the way, did you know that TripAdvisor is about 3X larger than any other review site and represents over 30% of the total travel review universe? Disclosure: UpTake is a licensee of TripAdvisor’s content.
- Unsubstantiated claim of uniqueness. Uniqueness.The release continues: “TravelPost is the only hotel site to aggregate rates, availability, content and reviews from more than 200 travel sites.” Wrong! Looks like TravelPost now has reviews from: Yahoo! Travel, IgoUgo, Perfect Escape, Epinions, Bed&Breakfast.com, Orbitz, Hotels.com, Hilton Hotels, Best Western, and Morgans Hotel Group. That’s a nice beginning. But hardly the “most comprehensive” or “the only hotel site to aggregate reviews”. In fact, we think we already have the same review sources as TravelPost, with the exception of the 547 reviews they’ve crawled from Perfect Escape.
- Some questions for TravelPost. Of the 200 travel sites, how many do you actually crawl reviews from? Of the review sites you crawl, how many can you actually do your age/gender/reviewer filtering on?
- Time to fire your PR firm. Oh, you already did. According to PRWeek, Kayak fired their old agency Edelman and issued an RFP for a new one. PR professionals, it looks like they are looking for an agency for $10k per month to save them from press releases like this one!
OK, UpTake. Stop whining and tell me what you’ve got!
Let me offer some numbers to back up my point here.
Totals:
- 175,000 U.S. accomodations (vs. TravelPost’s 140,000 Worldwide)
- 600,000 U.S. attractions
- 20 mm opinions across all sources (we include ratings, opinions and reviews vs. TravelPost’s 512,323 reviews only)
- 5000+ sources (websites, books, other)
Here’s a small smattering of the 5000+ websites included in UpTake:
- TripAdvisor
- Yahoo
- MyTravelGuide
- Expedia
- VirtualTourist
- Orbitz
- GoCityKids
- Golf.com
- GoSki
- Citysearch
- Hotels.com
- BedAndBreakfast.Com
- Fodors
- Epinions
- OpenList
- Yelp
- SpaFinder
- USA Today
- Many, many more magazines, hotels, and CVBs
I’m not going to make TravelPost’s life too easy by listing the full 5000+ list! 
But it appears that we have all the same review sources and many more, with the exception of the 547 reviews on Perfect Escape. We will contact them today to see if they want to join our party here at UpTake!
Again TravelPost, congrats on a great product entry! And Steve, lets discuss how we can work together to move online travel forward instead of bashing each other to get press!
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4 Responses
Great comments!
EB – I’m definitely not counting them out. Interested in seeing how badmouthing Expedia helps them get a deal with Expedia!
Indra – To be fair, I don’t think Edelman was involved in this. Weber Shandwick is one of the firms in the running for the new Agency of Record role according to the PRWeek article.
Claude – Thanks for dropping by! Edelman has some very savvy social media people, but they are probably in short supply. Also, from personal experience, I think clients have unrealistic expectations of PR firms in terms of real social media engagement. I was the client that was unreasonable, until I realized that you can’t really outsource engagement (or at least it is very difficult to do so)
Thanks for these comments so far everyone!
Yes, congratulations to the Travel Post team on their launch. However, as an accredited (APR) public relations professional with over 25 years in the business, I do not think it is wise to announce a launch of one’s site while criticizing another company. I also don’t think the PR firm recommended that Travel Post send a press release bashing potential travel content partners. In my experience, PR usually take suggestions from the client and drafts a release. Ultimately, the client needs to accept accountability for the content.
As my mother always said, “you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Are you listening Mr. Hafner?
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EB – i agree with you. Kayak was very successful when it launched by comparing itself to an industry leader; it was great for their credibility.
Sheila – it might be too late to ‘tear down’ TripAdvisor, according to Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney, Expedia generated more then $250M in advertising revenue in 2008, almost exclusively from the TripAdvisor media group.
Anna and Nancy – we should have a ‘truth in PR’ guideline like we have ‘truth in advertising’?
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