Re:Inside the Mad, Mad World of TripAdvisor
by walterbell on Monday March 16, 2015 @02:58AM
(#9210207)
I wonder what would happen if Yelp joined the hotel review business.
I don't know if they'd lose, but I don't know if they'd make a dent in TripAdvisor as opposed to the smaller competitors. People go where the data is, and Trip has the reviews and has the reputation for trustworthiness. Yelp doesn't have a good rep as far as trustworthiness goes--the allegations of paying to hide bad reviews, etc.--and would be starting from zero or near-zero.
(And, having seen a few organizations handle fraud in user-generated content, I think Trip does a pretty good--not great, not perfect, but better than anybody else I've seen--job of it.)
As a first gig out of college, it was great and I don't regret spending time there. It was a gentle-enough introduction to large corporate structure and while I'm not temperamentally suited to "Cog #541" type of gigs, it's easy to see why as a company it's very successful.