Tripadvisor + viator have they got a greenprint for the future?

With $200m acquisition of Viator, Tripadvisor puts itself in a position to monetize destinations, but will they be sustainable?

Following on the setting up of the Green Leaders programme and acquisition of Responsible Tourism Network’s Tripbod ("your friend at the other end") for an undisclosed sum, Tripadvisor has followed up with something much bigger – Viator ("Travel with an Insider").

Given that it looks like Tripadvisor’s business model is focused on using its massive consumer profile (probably now well over the stated 260 million unique users a month) – to make money out of its destination relationships – what does this bode for sustainable tourism?

Pretty much everybody from the GSTC down has now realized that the key to sustainable tourism is destination management. And of course this is bound to be true – the fact is that tourism impacts are felt primarily in destinations. The economic, social, cultural and environmental issues may be shared by tourists and the travel industry but they are actually felt at close hand by communities in tourism destinations. Like the egg and bacon – while the travel industry is involved in the production the destination is totally committed.

Tripadvisor have long made it known that it is their intention to provide whole traveler solutions and it seems that the Viator purchase is just one more step down this route. With the recent purchase of Vacation Home Rentals (another booming startup sector), Tripadvisor  has made its intentions pretty clear

Given a little time and an amount of management control, Tripadvisor and Viator (together with any further purchases Tripadvisor may make with their soaring market capitalisation and enormous P/E) may ultimately be providing the whole holiday solution from their own resources. The massive Tripadvisor audience would certainly go a long way to justify this. However the locally-responsible destination management organization may be frozen out of the picture.

Tripadvisor have made it clear that the business model for their destination pages is the destination’s payment for its content, but they could easily go it alone, or increase the price to a level where it would be impossible for destinations to control their own destiny.

The organisation’s insistence on its own standard for the Green Leaders programme would seem to indicate that they already have a pretty well-developed ‘Greenprint’ and that they see sustainable tourism as a potent value-adding marketing tool.

Swopping travel agents % for amateur reviewers may make commercial sense but reviewers will need more than a smartphone to make sense of environmental, social and cultural accommodation actions. And to whom will they be responsible in the last resort?

It will be interesting to see how the Tripadvisor green standard develops, but it would be a great shame if a common global green tourism standard implemented and accredited by qualified agencies were to be the loser, it would take a long time to recreate – time that we probably don’t have.

Valere Tjolle

@ValereTjolle [email protected]

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