Will TripAdvisor become the Amazon of the travel industry?

Amazon has been credited with playing a major role in closing down scores of bookshops and publishing houses, by providing a one-stop shop for a gigantic range of goods, many at heavily discounted prices.

Is $10bn tech giant TripAdvisor gearing up to shake the travel trade to its foundations in just the same way? Hook up to the site today and you can book hotels, restaurants, tours, safaris, attractions and museums. For hotel bookings alone, it is expected to handle $3 billion (2.92 bn CHF) in gross bookings this year alone.

Increasingly taking the role of travel agents, the travel review website is increasingly a threat to the likes of Tui and Thomas Cook, and also companies like Ryanair and easyJet, who are moving into selling package holidays. And Ryanair, who already affer customers the opportunity to book hotel rooms when buying flights, from October will expand to hostels, homestays and villas.

TripAdvisor launched in 2000 and now, with a claimed 350 million users a month, is the globe’s biggest travel site and has huge power in the travel industry. With more than 13,000 reviews posted each hour, it can make or break a travel business.

Although it started as a forum for travellers to post reviews it has much bigger ambitions now. In the last five years it has been steadily moving towards becoming a full-service holiday operator, offering more and more travel products. Although flights cannot be booked yet, invariably this will follow.

Use of the latest technology and very low running costs are allowing it to shake up the travel industry in the same way Uber has done to the taxi business.

When Ryanair recently announced its expansion plans, offering a greater range of holiday accommodation, it said it seeks to become ‘the Amazon of air travel’ However, TripAdvisor has a greater chance of achieving overall dominance as it is often used throughout a travellers’ stay. When people book a Ryanair flight they have no reason to  return to the website during their holiday, but many travellers return to TripAdvisor during their trip to find hotels, attractions and tours. 

While TripAdvisor expands, interestingly, Amazon’s foray into the travel industry has been short-lived. Last year it quietly ended its hotel-booking service, Amazon Destinations. Although it only ran for six months and was limited to a just few cities, many observers believed it had plenty of potential to grow, especially considering that in 2013 the combined sales for online travel firms Expedia and Priceline alone came to $278 billion. 

Clearly there are still considerable teething problems as companies like TripAdvisor and Ryanair continue to expand into selling more and more travel industry products, but traditional travel companies like travel agents and hotels should be fearful that their businesses may be all but transformed or even obliterated, just as music labels, newspaper, magazines and book publishers have seen happen, as online operations made their place in their industries increasingly outmoded.