It is probably no surprise that TripAdvisor commands such a large portion of online hotel reviews - but Booking.com is chasing its tale.
At least this is the case of hotels identified in the "luxury" segment, where the Priceline Group-owned accommodation site has a 25.4% share of all reviews on the web compared to 25.8% on TripAdvisor.
This finding came from a major piece of analysis by online reputation management company ReviewPro, which examined 2.7 million reviews across web for luxury properties during 2015, evaluating a total of 2,700 hotels from 159 global brands.
Some 175 online travel agencies and review sites (plus Facebook) were included in the analysis.
The company found that, overall, the number of luxury reviews had increased by 4% year-on-year but TripAdvisor has found its once dominant position somewhat eroded in the past 12 months.
TripAdvisor has dropped 2.2 percentage points in market share, whilst Booking.com has climbed by 28% y/y to move within a whisker of the online review giant.
This may in part be due to Booking.com's emphasis on customer relationship management in recent years (follow-up emails to guests in-destination, once they've left, in order to get a review) but the pair have still mainated a clear lead on the other brands in the study.
ReviewPro says there is a growing importance placed on reviews in the Chinese market, not least by observing the unseating of Facebook in third spot by Ctrip and eLong in particular (and Hotels.com in general).
Chinese deal site Dianping climbed to 10th spot from 18th over the same period (a leap of almost 26,000 reviews).
China in the largest contributor of reviews for luxury hotels, with 703,000, an increase of 46% y/y, whilst the USA fell 12.9% to 351,000.
In terms of the details in the reviews and ratings contained within the reviews, 83% were positive, 12% were neutral and just 5% were negative.
Remarkably, perhaps, given the overwhelmingy number of favourable reviews, hotel managers still responded on 41.5% of occasions.
NB:Luxury hotel image via Pixabay.
NB2:Full report here.