Automating the word of mouth process for planning travel

EFT Special: Sales and Marketing in Travel USA 2007TravelPost.com, a hotel reviews and ratings and travel advisory services site, focuses on empowering travelers with tools that automate the ‘word of mouth’ experience.

Published: 06 May 2007

EFT Special: Sales and Marketing in Travel USA 2007

TravelPost.com, a hotel reviews and ratings and travel advisory services site, focuses on empowering travelers with tools that automate the ‘word of mouth’ experience.

Following its acquisition by SideStep, Inc. last year, Sam Shank, VP TravelPost.com, SideStep
says the site has been able to leverage travel search engine’s sales expertise, marketing skills, technology teams and business partnerships to dramatically accelerate the growth of TravelPost.com.

On benefiting from the strategic alliance, Shank says, “We have, absolutely (benefited), and in many ways. The SideStep Network now has a combined reach of over 6M monthly visitors, and with that broad audience, TravelPost.com is seeing orders of magnitude growth in people posting and reading hotel reviews.”

With the explosion of video, social networking and user-generated content, how TravelPost.com, as a travel blogging, hotel ratings and advisory services site, is positioned to provide feature-rich online experiences?

On plans regarding the same, Shank told EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta, “We’ll continue to expand the types and formats of information shared by the TravelPost.com community to enhance the process of sharing travel advice, and finding quality travel recommendations from people like you. We’ve been doing some experiments in this area, and when our members tell us that they’re good enough, we’ll release some new experiences, likely later this year.”

A spate of travel planning tools are being introduced by online travel sites. Shank, one of the speakers for the Sales and Marketing in Travel USA 2007 to be held in Miami on May 9-10, shared that SideStep.com is exploring this space and will add functionality here to add value to its travel search product.

“Our recently released SideStep personal travel pages provide personalisation of our search results and a hub for sharing travel planning activity,” said Shank.

Further, on initiatives planned ahead, he said, "We have a number of ongoing initiatives to continue to make the TravelPost.com platform more exciting and useful for planning travel, and we are extend internationally along with our parent company. We are also expanding into new travel categories that I think will surprise a lot of people. It’s exciting that the TravelPost.com team now has the resources to deliver on our vision."

(An interview with Sam Shank, VP TravelPost.com, SideStep will be posted soon)

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