VIDEO: TripAdvisor on a new social strategy and tweaking its activity stance

TripAdvisor has been busy during 2018, with a combination of significant acquisition and new attempt to tackle the social-led planning phase of travel.

CEO and president Steve Kaufer, speaking during The Phocuswright Conference 2018, references both bits of activity as the company comes up on nearly two decades.

The company recently went all-in on a new push (and design) aimed at making the site more collaborative, using a combination of personalization and with information and offers at the relevant time.

But it also came up for considerable criticism following comments made at the Arival Conference about preferencing Bokun suppliers in search on the platform, following its purchase of the tours and activities software brand in April of this year.

President of experiences Dermot Halpin talked of “better placement” at the event, causing the no small amount of upset in the tours and activities community.

Fast-forward six weeks, and Kaufer reined in the earlier comments, saying suppliers would be treated the same.

Kaufer talks of the benefit of having Bokun to get additional bits of information from suppliers to market them better, but that TripAdvisor “loves” that information from everyone.

He went on to encourage suppliers to use the technology that best fits their business needs but to make sure their technology partner distributes their inventory on Viator and on TripAdvisor to get access to its volumes of customers.

Here is Kaufer's interview on Center Stage, where he discusses both topics and more.