A property must be both a BookingCenter and TripAdvisor Business Listing customer and enroll via the Management Center and accept the Review Express API terms and conditions. Enrollment in ReviewExpress means that TripAdvisor will automate the delivery of ‘Review Requests’ from guests who stay at your property to gain more reviews on TripAdvisor.
TripAdvisor Module
BookingCenter offers three settings for your involvement with the Review Express program:
- Send only ‘Review Requests’ from guests who booked as a result of your TripAdvisor listing. We track each ‘referral’ from TripAdvisor with a code that TripAdvisor places on your ‘Booking Engine link’ to target only this group of online bookers.
- Send ‘Review Requests’ to guests who booked via any online booking processed by BookingCenter. This would include all online bookings: website booking from all sources, GDS agents, OTAs, etc.
- Send ‘Review Requests’ to all guests who checked out – meaning all Guests from your PMS, as well as those booked online.
As TripAdvisor details in their FAQ on this program, 2 days after check-out, a guest will receive a ‘Review Request’ from TripAdvisor. In your TripAdvisor Management Center, you will be able to watch the queue of Review Requests’ scheduled to go out. TripAdvisor offers an option for a property to delete a ‘Review Requests’ from the queue from a tool within your Business Listing service. Once BookingCenter sends TripAdvisor the guest names and emails, there is nothing BookingCenter can do to draw them back. Thus, make sure to remove a ‘Review Request’ from a guest who had a bad experience prior to 2 days after check out.
You can enroll or leave the ReviewExpress program at any time. Think long and hard about whether you want BookingCenter to send your guest details to TripAdvisor for this program, as 100% liability for this resides with your business and TripAdvisor.
A property must be both a BookingCenter and TripAdvisor Business Listing customer and enroll via the Management Center at TripAdvisor to accept the Terms and conditions from TripAdvisor. When doing this, our customers select BookingCenter as their Booking Engine (which you will see as an option).
From then onward, the Agent Allocation you wish Trip Advisor travelers to view will be shown while they are evaluating your property. The rooms and rates can be whatever you wish, by default set to your Booking Engine allocation, thus can be higher or lower than the rates you make available to other distribution sites.
For more information on how owners can register and verify with TripAdvisor, click here. You must be enrolled in the TripAdvisor Module from BookingCenter, which you can order by contacting us.
Sign up and activate Trip Advisor with your BookingCenter PMS:
- To start, your property must must be both a BookingCenter and TripAdvisor Business Listing customer. If you need to sign up, see Trip Advisor: Get Listed Now and What a Business Listing offers your property
- Once you are signed up for a Trip Advisor business listing, enroll for the TripConnect program via the TripAdvisor Management Center.
- Once you have selected to enroll with the TripConnect program, you will be presented with a list of 'Certified Booking Engine' companies. Choose 'BookingCenter' and within 24 hours your listing on TripAdvisor will show your Availability Calendar and allow travelers to get 'Direct Rates' - no more sending customers to GDS and OTA travel websites where you pay a high cost for a booking.
- You don't need to do anything within your BookingCenter system for this to work - that has all been handled in the interface between BookingCenter and TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor will be pulling the rates and availabiity allocated to your 'website', which is usually Agent: BC. You don't need to inform BookingCenter you have signed up for these services, as TripAdvisor notifies us witin 24 hours.
Note: There are times when you have signed up for TripConnect, but you will not see the "Official Site" tab under your listing that directs them to your BookingCenter Booking Engine. According to TripAdvisor, this can happen when your Campaign Management page has not been given enough credit, or if the bid is not high enough. Thus, your "Official Site" tab under your listing can come and go based on the 'market volatility' of TripAdvisor's campaigns. BookingCenter can not help to restore the link to your 'Official' website if this happens, only TripAdvisor can. To learn what you need to do to set up your campaign to get that "Official Site" tab under your TripAdvisor back again, see this video: How to Sign up for Trip Connect
Note: BookingCenter also support's the TripAdvisor Conversion Tracking program. This means that when a property participates in TripConnect, and bids for clicks, BookingCenter will send back details about the booking made, such as what date/time the booking was completed, currency booked, cost, and what method used to track the booking. Thus, a participating property can get a good 'return on investment' analysis.
The TripAdvisor Module is more empowering technology from BookingCenter to help you perform better. If you want to sign up or learn more about how BookingCenter can help you improve your use of TripAdvisor, contact us today.
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