But of course, the truth is that TripAdvisor IS the biggest travel website out there, and we get a huge amount of traffic from them. And it is a very big deal for a hotel to win an award like this from them precisely because they are so big and omnipresent. Bottom line is that it’s really good for business.

That being said, we have had our share of issues with TripAdvisor over the years, as has every hotel owner or manager we’ve ever spoken to. While they have a huge and powerful web presence in the travel field, they are not without their issues. But that’s not the story we’re telling here.

There is good and bad about TripAdvisor to be sure. The good is that TripAdvisor–unlike all of the OTAs–generally lists almost ALL hotels and accommodations in an area. This gives travelers doing their own research a MUCH wider view of what is actually available in a given area, since hotels do not have to pay anything to be listed on TripAdvisor. When you go to Expedia or any other online travel agency, you will ONLY see hotels that are paying for that privilege, which excludes many properties that can’t or don’t want to do so–seriously limiting a traveler’s choices.

The bad about TripAdvisor is that it appears they are in bed with the even more omnipresent Expedia, just like so many other travel websites. The day after we wrote our second blog, two days after TripAdvisor removed the Venere link on our page, the link was back again. In other words, four months after severing ties with Expedia, the largest travel website in the world still refers people looking for rooms at the Luna Blue to Venere/Expedia, which shows us as having no availability. Two of our TripAdvisor reviews where people referenced our problems with Expedia were simply removed by TripAdvisor. Almost every one of TripAdvisor’s 19 “travel media brands” (travel sites) are fed directly from Expedia’s inventory of hotel rooms. In fact a couple of the links we listed on most recent blog which show us as having no availability are actually owned by TripAdvisor and fed by Expedia!

The more we dig, the more we find out about how complicated and interwoven these companies all are. We didn’t know any of this when we signed up with Expedia–we just thought it would be a good way to get more exposure and increase our revenue. Had we known then what we know now, we would have handled things much differently to be sure. These giant companies just continue to grow in size and power. We just hope they don’t eventually gobble up all of the competition. We think that would be pretty bad for everyone–consumers and businesses alike.

Tony & Cheri