Last week, Danny King over at Travel Weekly hit the nail on the head with his assessment of Expedia’s so called “verified” review system. Expedia Verified Reviews attempts to qualify hotel reviews using “use” of Expedia as a criteria. Having pushed TripAdvisor from the OTA nest on its own, Expedia seems intent on milking the last drop from the user review teat.
reviews
Twigmore Puts People First in Travel
A new startup called Twigmore is aimed directly at putting people and their real impressions of “places” in the correct order. Unlike many “geocentric” travel tools, this new entry tries to arrange for local review wisdom for your trip planning. At least this seems like the gist.
Google + and Really Refined Reviews – Coming Soon
The suggested Google Travel entity could be just around the corner. According to the news from Tnooz and Kevin May, Google unceremoniously yanked third party reviews from hotels on Google Maps and Google Places, a move May suggests puts Google’s review credibility down there with TripAdvisor’s. But what if?
Oyster.com Gets $10 million Boost from Travel Channel
The sun must seem a little brighter this week for folks at Oyster.com. In its Series B funding round, Oyster raked in $10 million from the Travel Channel and Bain Capital, a previous investor. The Travel Channel chipped in $7.5 million of the funding, taking with them a minority stake in the hotel-booking website. In […]