It took a while, but the idea of using travel agents to write online reviews of hotels and destinations did finally catch on, and now seems like a bit of a no-brainer.
So while a plethora of review sites jostle for position in the increasingly busy B2C space, it has been left to a select few to try and harness the apparent collective experience and wisdom of the retail travel agency community.
In the UK, Travel Weekly subscription content brand gazetteers.com introduced agent reviews a few years ago, while Northstar Travel Media in the US has a similar review system of hotels with StarService Online.
Sabre has a system in the US called AgentStream, which is part of the Cubeless platform and is a social network where participants can share information - including reviews - around the network.
And, now, step forward Travelport and its quietly growing agent hotel review project, Travelport Opinions (or Galileo Opinions).
The product was launched in France in 2008 by Jerome Moisan and - similar to review platforms elsewhere on the web - allows agents to post reviews of hotels featured in the Travelport system.
Moisan is now the new UK and Ireland general manager and is bringing Travelport Opinions - "TripAdvisor for B2B", as he calls it - to the UK.
Soft-launching in December 2009, Opinions (which is powered by Vinivi) will be rolled out fully in the first quarter of 2010 and backed by a marketing drive and incentive programme.
In France the project started modestly, with agents taking a few months to create 1,000 reviews. Moisan says the system then reached a kind of tipping point and the "second 1,000" was reached within weeks.
Travelport is hoping agents on other GDS system will still use it. Between a quarter and a third of users in France are not Travelport subscribers, Moisan claims.