Tripadvisor Tests Instant Book (Again)

25.08.2023 - 13:19 / skift.com / Steve Kaufer / Dennis Schaal / Matt Goldberg

This story began with a promotion featured in an email from my credit card company, Capital One, and it took me aback: “Save up to 30% off on your Instant Book hotel with Tripadvisor.”

WHAT?

If you aren’t an online travel nerd, or don’t work in the industry, you may not understand my shock, but many of you who read this column will “get it” right away.

Although it may have appeared sporadically over the years, Tripadvisor largely abandoned Instant Book in 2017, and the strategy reversal was a big deal at the time.

Why?

When Tripadvisor markets hotels, it largely does so as a metasearch site. In metasearch, online travel agencies and hotels bid to list their hotel rates on Tripadvisor, and have to pay a pre-determined cost per click when consumers select them and get redirected to their websites for booking.

But with Instant Book six or seven years ago, Tripadvisor was trying to be much more like an online travel agency in that travelers could book the hotel without having to leave the Tripadvisor platform.

At the time, the Instant Book initiative was a key strategy plank for Tripadvisor, but the hotel industry and some online travel players didn’t adopt it in a big way. On the one hand, some hotels welcomed the idea of Tripadvisor becoming more powerful as a marketing platform to blunt the power of Google, Expedia and Booking.com. On the other hand, many hotels and online travel agencies wanted consumers to visit their platforms directly without having to rely on a third party like Tripadvisor.

Tripadvisor’s abandonment of Instant Book in 2017 landed with a thud.

But now, under CEO Matt Goldberg, who took up his post last year, replacing Steve Kaufer, Tripadvisor is resurrecting Instant Book, or at least testing another go-round, although there are some notable twists.

In this prominently placed search result for Library Hotel in New York City on Tripadvisor this morning, the Instant Book feature is the one from Tripadvisor itself ($472), as opposed to offers from Expedia.com ($472), Priceline ($524), and Hotels.com ($472).

One of the advantages to travelers — just like it was in the previous Instant Book incarnation — is that if they choose the Instant Book offer from Tripadvisor itself, they can complete the booking right there. If they choose Expedia, Priceline or Hotels.com, they would first be redirected to those websites to search some more before completing a booking.

For the uninitiated in the complexities of online travel, this next statement may be mind-boggling. If you click Book & Get Rewards, then on the next page, where you insert your name and credit card details, you’ll learn that this particular Tripadvisor Instant Book deal actually comes through a partnership with Expedia.

If