India Special - Interview with Sharat Dhall, MD - India, TripAdvisorTravel community TripAdvisor launched its local Indian site, www.tripadvisor.in, in August this year.

Published: 26 Nov 2008

India Special - Interview with Sharat Dhall, MD - India, TripAdvisor

Travel community TripAdvisor launched its local Indian site, www.tripadvisor.in, in August this year.

One of the driving factors behind launching the Indian domain was that the company was witnessing a very "large and committed" Indian audience on its international sites, which span the US, UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan.

TripAdvisor's managing director for Indian operations Sharat Dhall says within three months of launch, www.tripadvisor.in is already amongst the top five travel sites in India.

"This provides us with a tremendous launching pad for the India business," said Dhall.

Dhall, a speaker during the inaugural session of EyeforTravel's Travel Distribution Summit India 2008, being held in Mumbai, says the focus of the India business is on significantly extending the reach amongst Indians, get greater contributions from Indian users, and enhance the India-centric content.

"As this unfolds, TripAdvisor will play a key role in catalysing online hotel bookings in the country," said Dhall.

In an interview with EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta, Dhall spoke about building TripAdvisor brand in India, options for travel supplier/OTA to make TripAdvisor a part of their consumer marketing strategy and much more.

EyeforTravel.com: What are immediate plans for building TripAdvisor brand in India (are there are plans for traditional advertising along with online marketing)?

Sharat Dhall: The plan is to build the TripAdvisor brand and the www.tripadvisor.in domain in India very much like we have done all over the world, largely through online marketing and PR. Surveys amongst our community offer a fantastic insight in to travellers' habits and opinions, and generate interesting news stories. We also share travel trends with the media on a regular basis. In addition, we have had great success with a promotional partnership with an online shopping portal to trigger off contributions from our Indian users and going forward, we will seek to use further tactical promotions .

EyeforTravel.com: According to data available, users are spending on an average of 30 minutes on top social networking websites on a monthly basis in the US. When people invest their time contributing to UGC, what do they expect in return?

Sharat Dhall: There are a huge number of different factors that motivate people to share their experiences with the world at large. However, to my mind, the satisfaction of adding value to & improving other people's experiences (in this case, travel experiences) by sharing what they themselves have experienced, is what motivates people to contribute to the TripAdvisor community.

Connecting with other people, sharing one's experiences with others, and learning from the experiences of others, is what keeps people coming back to TripAdvisor.

EyeforTravel.com: Consumers currently have to swim through an ocean of unorganised information from friends, guidebooks, review sites, blogs, photo and video sites, newspapers and communities. Even if a consumer is on a particular portal, it is quite critical to ensure users know the source of the information. How are you planning to project a site like TripAdvisor in India?

Sharat Dhall: TripAdvisor stands for unbiased reviews and opinions from real travellers and that's the way we will project the brand in India. It is the world's largest travel community, with over 20m reviews, opinions, videos and photos about destinations, hotels, attractions and restaurants. In essence, TripAdvisor captures the best of social information sources, and presents it in an organised manner to users enabling them to plan their perfect trip.

EyeforTravel.com: As social networking sites aggregate and rank trusted reviews from other travelers, and as the semantic Web becomes a reality, how do you think travel suppliers in India should participate in the conversation and use the medium to address issues head on and to serve the needs of customers?

Sharat Dhall: The suppliers have to approach the medium and their customers in an open and honest way.

I would strongly recommend that Indian suppliers look at the example of a hotel brand, Affinia Hotels, which works in this manner. The hotel managers at Affinia are on TripAdvisor every single day, looking at what is being said about their particular hotels. If there is a problem stated about the hotel in a review, then they use our Management Response function to reply to the reviewer to try and better understand the issue,

and if necessary offer a solution to the problem. This is a fantastic way of displaying great customer service to the reviewer, as well as to other consumers thinking about staying at the hotel. A property should view anegative review as invaluable feedback that needs to be acted upon, rather than adopting a closed, ostrich-like approach.

EyeforTravel.com: Suppliers such as InterContinental acknowledge that their brands like Holiday Inn/ Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza are represented in a genuine fashion on YouTube, Second Life, and Facebook. What role do you think Travel 2.0 sites especially networking sites are playing today as far as consumer marketing is concerned?

Sharat Dhall: Apart from relevant display and click-based advertising, there are a number of other ways in which a travel supplier/OTA can make TripAdvisor a part of their consumer marketing strategy. A couple of these are:

a) Leveraging the trust: TripAdvisor provides a suite of tools for owners and managers of hotels, restaurants and attractions to bring the proven power of user-generated reviews and ratings to their own web sites. Unbiased user-generated reviews have been proven to turn lookers into bookers by leveraging the trust consumers place on the opinions of travelers like themselves. Similarly, many Travel suppliers and OTAs have found real benefits in partnering with TripAdvisor to show our content (reviews, photos, etc. of hotels and attractions) on their websites. This has been proven to improve conversions on their sites.

In a 2007 survey of 360 e-commerce companies, sites that added user reviews reported very positive results:

- 56 percent lifted conversion

- 77 percent raised traffic

- 42 percent increased the average shopping basket

b) Encouraging postive feedback while managing negative feedback: Suppliers who are at the top of their consumer marketing game, have recognised that the best way to engage with the TripAdvisor community is to be open and proactive. Hotel chains actively encourage positive feedback from satisfied guests, while responding promptly to a negative review through our management response mechanism, with a clear message indicating measures that they are taking to ensure that the issue at hand is addressed.

EyeforTravel.com: Other than OTA biz, the meta-search engines in Indian market (Ixigo,Mobissimo, Kayak, SpriceŠ) is getting crowded and with the entry of TripAdvisor, how quickly do you think travel suppliers would start paying for CPM, CPC, media solutions in India? What do you think would be critical mass for all these solutions?

Sharat Dhall: I think there is a pretty mature understanding amongst Indian travel suppliers and OTAs about the value of TripAdvisor to their business and a majority of them are already working with us. Having said that, there are clearly some who are still assessing how best to participate and derive the benefits of a community like TripAdvisor.

EyeforTravel.com: As you build your product in India, what do you think are going to be main challenges for TripAdvisor to monetize the same?

Sharat Dhall: The focus of the India business and launching the India domain www.tripadvisor.in is to significantly extend our reach amongst Indians, get greater contributions from Indian users, and enhance the India-centric content. We believe that quality content is King and monetisation will inevitably follow as a consequence.