TripSay blog

Tim (of The BOOT) has written an interesting and long entry regarding user generated vs. editorial content in travel. User generated content (UGC) consists of facts, reviews, journals and blogs written and further edited by millions of people. Think Wikipedia and Wikitravel for example. On the other hand editorial content refers to travel guides and travel agents’ sites written by an “expert”. Tim notes that the key is to find a balance between UGC and editorial content: UGC provides unbiased up-to-date reviews of destinations. But without an editor the content is difficult to sort and navigate.

UGC has been the centerpiece of the so called Travel 2.0 debate. Many (e.g. UKNetMonitor and m-Travel) have referred to reports by Nielsen//NetRating and EyeforTravel earlier this year. The reports basically state that travellers value UGC above editorial content and that UGC has an influence on their travel plans. Right. Of course you’ll value your friend’s opinion on a destination she has visited over some travel agent’s brochure with slick photos. What’s more interesting is the big percentage of travelers looking for UGC and that active travelers are much more UGC-aware than rookies…

Back to the balance issue. The problem is clear: for example in Tripadvisor there are so many entries on some popular hotels that there always are positive and negative reviews of the same place. And it’s impossible to know which reviews are relevant to me if I don’t know anything but a username of the reviewer. A solution is needed, but we don’t think a biased editor is the best solution. Instead, the reviews should be sorted by the authors’ profile: if a traveler has similar preferences with me, then I’ll value her review more than someone’s with an opposite travel profile. There have been interesting approaches for building a travel profile based on user demographics (age, gender, budget) but we think that’s not extensive enough: don’t think a review from someone on his first foreign trip is that relevant for me even though he is of the same age….
Therefore we are extending the travel profile to things like: where have you been; how you rated the destination; what are your interests (”profile tags”); what kind of trips have you made; etc. With these kind of profiles we can sort user generated content in much more interesting ways: “Show me reviews from people who are interested in hiking and outdoors and who have loved the Alps and Slovakian Tatra mountains but who didn’t like the crowded Uluru trail or the concrete jungle in New York.”

So off you go to refine your travel profile by rating your favorite destinations in vailoma.com and next time you’re planning a trip you’ll know who you gonna call…

- Vailoma team

Date: Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 8:43 am | Category: Uncategorized | RSS Feed: RSS 2.0 feed.
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