Here’s Why TripAdvisor Again Entered Into Television Advertisement After A Two Year Hiatus
TripAdvisor makes its big entry into the world of television advertisement after two years of absence. The company has announced that it will spend around $70 million on its TV ad campaigns for this year. As we had mentioned earlier, TripAdvisor won’t focus solely on its Instant Booking capability in the current crop of ads. Also, the ads will try to better explain the capabilities of the company in a short time span because the management feels as though it has the a lot more to offer, TripAdvisor is still used primarily as a travel review website. This is especially true when we see that TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel review website and yet, when it comes to attracting people to book through its platform, the company has not been highly successful, so far. As a result, its share prices fell by over 40% over the last year. The ads might be a better way to attract more customers to its platforms and use its metasearch and Instant Booking capabilities. The company stopped its TV ads due to the huge investments it incurred on setting up and enhancing its Instant Booking platform. However, recently, TripAdvisor’s revenue per shopper and the number of unique shoppers (two important parameters to measure the company’s growth) have improved in the U.S. which happens to be the first country where Instant Booking was completely rolled out. Hence, there are chances of gradual improvements in other markets as well. This, along with the effectiveness of the TV ads might significantly drive up revenues for the company in the near future.
The recent ad, that first aired in the U.S. last week and will soon be rolled out in select markets, features an owl clad in a bathrobe inspired by TripAdvisor’s brand logo of Ollie the Owl. The message conveyed through the ad is that TripAdvisor helps find hotels at the best prices, suiting the traveler’s budget from a selection of over 200 sites. The message at the end of this advertisement reads, “Know better, book better, go better.” The Instant Booking feature on TripAdvisor is not highlighted in the ad, however, the ads will be evolving with time and new releases. According to the company’s vice president of brand marketing, Neela Pal, the first ad wanted to focus on TripAdvisor’s ‘comparing hotel prices’ feature and the subsequent ads might deal with the booking option along with other features on TripAdvisor. Ms. Pal further added that though TripAdvisor is a well known name among travelers, all its functionalities and services are still not well known among travelers and the ads might be a way to make them more aware. It is noteworthy to mention that while TripAdvisor was absent from TV for the last couple of years, all its peers including Trivago, Hotels.com, Booking.com etc have been spending a significant amount of their budget on advertising. It was time for TripAdvisor to gear up on this front.
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