October 15, 2024 • 36 mins
Imagine you’re planning a trip to Japan, Argentina, or France, and you’re building your itinerary. Where do you go? TripAdvisor. For years it has been the go-to brand for restaurants, hotels, experiences, and so much more.
Today on Partners in Possibility, we’re sitting down with the Vice President of Global Marketing for TripAdvisor Matt Dacey, and Erin Georgieff, Managing Partner at Citizen Relations.
Together we will better understand how Tripadvisor became the number-one travel advice website in the world, how their Travelers Choice award became the gold standard in ratings for destinations, and what is now possible with their AI trip builder.
-Subscribe to Partners in Possibility on all podcast platforms to get your finger on the pulse of marketing!
Today on Partners in Possibility, we’re sitting down with the Vice President of Global Marketing for TripAdvisor Matt Dacey, and Erin Georgieff, Managing Partner at Citizen Relations.
Together we will better understand how Tripadvisor became the number-one travel advice website in the world, how their Travelers Choice award became the gold standard in ratings for destinations, and what is now possible with their AI trip builder.
-Subscribe to Partners in Possibility on all podcast platforms to get your finger on the pulse of marketing!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I joined trip Advisor five years ago because of the brand,
and I joined because of the challenge the brand had
too But I joined because of the brand, because it
had trust, and especially at a time I may go
back to twenty nineteen, but it's even more prevalent now.
Your trust is fading, losing trust in online in general,
(00:23):
establishment's losing trust, everybody's losing trust. But then you have
something that's pure.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
In an ever changing world. That's all about stained connected,
building connections and seeing where the next collaboration takes a
marketing campaign from an initial brief to the follow through.
What paths are going to make a campaign success more
than a possibility? Hi, I'm Brett Marshand, CEO of Plus Company.
This is partner's and possibility. Online reviews are everything in
(00:59):
travel planning. Trip Advisor has single handedly shaped the way destinations, accommodations, tours,
and even experiences are reviewed. Traveler photos are uploaded, recommendations
are shared on everything from where to stay, what do
we eat, even who to talk to at the front desk.
Trip Advisor has set itself apart as the go to
(01:21):
for travel planning. Today's podcast will introduce the person leading
trip Advisor's global marketing team to discuss how trip Advisor
has become the world's leading and most trusted travel advice platform.
On today's episode, I'll be speaking with Matt Dacy, VP
of Global Marketing at trip Advisor, and Aaron Georgief, managing
partner at Citizen Relations. Aaron was an author of plus
(01:44):
company's twenty twenty four travel Trends report. We called it
Traveling the Great Divide. Today, we'll also talk about one
of trip Advisor's biggest initiatives every year, the Traveler's Choice
Awards program. Well Trip Advisor, a little bit about Matt's background.
(02:05):
We're going to talk about what's going on in the
travel industry, may even touch on AI a little bit.
So I'm really excited about doing this one. I'm a
huge fan of trip Advisor, which I think I told
you already, Matt. I use it a lot, so I
probably know too much about how it works in the communities,
et cetera. But I think our listeners for sure will
want to hear a little bit about you and just
(02:26):
your background and how you got into a role running,
you know, in a global job like you have running
marketing at trip Advisor. So maybe maybe we just start there.
How did you get into marketing, how did you get
to trip Advisor? And what advice do you have for
people who would be who die to have your job?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Oh? Good, good, Well, hopefully not too many people. I
don't want anybody to take it. But Brett, thanks so much.
First of all, it's been a pleasure meeting you and
being on this podcast is exciting to me. So I
appreciate you guys inviting me in the first place. And
there's nothing I like to talk more about than my
Oh so thank you for cleaning up the first question.
(03:03):
But my background is kind of a strange one, which
I think is interesting. I started to study entrepreneurship at Syracuse.
They had a number one entrepreneurship program in the country.
Fell in love with it, obsessed about business books, starting businesses.
I started a laser tag arena, which we had had
(03:24):
a state fair. We moved into a movie rental delivery business,
which we started I started with a couple other founders,
which then we translated into a grocery delivery business. Then
we translated into a grocery delivery software business. And we
did all of these right before Netflix, and then right
(03:44):
before Instacart and right before everybody that made a ton
of money is basically my timing on everything in life,
and so tis everything exactly. So I learned a ton.
It was super passionate about the customer at the end
of the day, and also having an impact that's tangible
where people can see it. Translated that in business school
(04:08):
where I went to business school and started in consulting,
and my consulting was primarily in retail, so again in
an area close to the customer, understanding who the customer is,
why they buy, how we can anticipate customer behavior. And
then I think, more importantly in jobs like I have now,
is how do you actually structure and execute to deliver
(04:28):
for the customer. And I had the pleasure of working
with a number of clients that had large stores, either
globally or in the United States, just big footprints, and
you learn how hard it is to take an idea
from the office and to then go execute it across
ten thousand stores flawlessly, and you start to understand why
that experience is so hard in store when it seems
(04:48):
so easy on a whiteboard. And it gives you, I think,
a pretty unique appreciation for what it takes to get
things done, and from consulting, I went over to CBS
Health where I worked for about seven years, and there
I led a handful of the largest strategic initiatives that
the company, and CBS is huge. Obviously it's US based,
(05:10):
but it's fortune for from a company standpoint, and I
learned just a ton and a lot of my work
was understanding customer behavior, trying to anticipate customer needs, and
then delivering personalized communications. And so I had the pleasure
of running a personalization initiative for over four years where
we really really pushed the needle on what you can
(05:31):
do from a personalization standpoint. Also then led the Extra
Care Loyalty Program, which is one of the largest loyalty
programs in the United States and had a PNL that
was over a billion dollars a large team there. I
learned a tremendous amount. I learned a lot. Again, a
lot of this is from a marketing standpoint. Really its
core understanding what customer's needs are and how we anticipate
(05:54):
them and how we start to move the needle by
delivering personalized communications to the customer. And so then I
had this job that came in front of me now,
which it's taken a twist in the turn and back
to my timing, Brett, I joined right before the pandemic
and traveled so awesome timing about six months before the pandemic.
(06:15):
But I joined at a pretty amazing time. And we'll
talk a bit more about trip Advisor, but it was
at this big turning point for the company, and I
wanted to be part of the brand. I wanted to
be part of a giant transformation that I knew was
going to be multiple years in the making. I just
didn't anticipate the little blip in the middle of a pandemic.
(06:35):
And you know, I'm super excited to be here. It's
a phenomenal company. I have a privilege of working with
and for amazing people at the company now. But that's
my wild journey to kind of get here, and I
think I've picked up a tremendous amount and even at
trip Advisor, understanding SEO from I would argue one of
the best searching optimization teams in the world performance marketing
(06:59):
and just it has been so much that I've been
able to learn and then help grow here at trip Advisor.
It's been frankly a pretty pretty fun journey.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Listen. I have to comment before we move on to
trip Advisor, because you're the You're the guy behind the
infamous mile long CBS receipts right which which was spoofed
like crazy. So I mean, how the heck did you
come up with that? Tell me a little bit about
that story, because I think people would be fascinated to
know that there was some purpose behind that.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, it's not just to be annoying. Yeah, and I
would like to take sole credit, but it's a team
of people that you know at the very extra care
the lawyers brog had been around for twenty years and
it was a fantastic program at the time, super innovative,
and we've always had these offers that come out of
(07:52):
the receipt. At the time, it was one or two offers,
and part of the job was to understand why customers
are not converting to specific categories. So you take oral care.
It's like a customer's been in the store forty times.
I hope they brush their teeth, but not one time
in forty have they purchased oral care. So why have
(08:14):
they not bought it? And what can you do to
overcome whatever barrier? That is to conversion. It might just
be I just don't think of the store this way,
that's not on my list here, whatever it is. And
so we started to deliver personalized offers. Frequent customers haven't
bought this category, but bought adjacent categories, and we started
to introduce those offers in a personalized manner, and people
(08:35):
started to use them, and then they started to use
more of them. And it's basically something that if you
think about it, it just starts to print money because
you're giving the customer what they want and it's starting
to change behavior. And so then you go from how
do I convert somebody to how do I actually drive
a trip back to the store which then carries a
basket of fifteen twenty dollars? And then how do I
(08:58):
start to sell adjacent products? So now you've got a
conversion offer, you've got an adjacent offer, you've got a
trip building offer. And then you're like, well, you know what,
partners will fund this because of course major brands want
to have their offers there, so now they're paid for,
and so then it's like, well, what if I did
five more offer? And so then what starts to happen
(09:20):
is you start to move and people are attracted to
obviously making money, and then people are attracted from a
customer standpoint to saving money. And that's probably one of
the most unique things. Like we had a stat at
some point that over seventy to eighty percent of Americans
have less than one thousand dollars in their savings account.
And then you think about the purpose back to that,
(09:41):
which is like extra Care is a program itself exists
to help people save money. And so you start to
create these personalized offers. They're relevant, they work, people want more,
and the recy got longer, and I think over three
or four years we five x the revenue and we're
talking like hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental revenue
(10:02):
from a revenue standpoint through these activations. And then of
course when you have partners engaged, it introduced a whole
level of profitability. This is before the retail media networks,
you know, started to really scale, and so that's kind
of how it came about. And then of course we
had the internal debates, right, which is like Okay, I
don't want like why do we have a fourteen you know,
(10:25):
off of receipts? Yeah, how long do we let it
get Yeah, and then it's like, well, let's shift to digital,
because so like the common things, of course, everything should
be digital. So we put everything on the phone. When
we started serving our customers about taking away the paper receipts,
they didn't want us to. And so you've got a
whole group of customers that are driving on this value,
(10:45):
that are saying, don't take that away from me. I
like to cut those that put them in my wallet
and put them in my purse. And that's how I shot.
And so do not do that. And if you do
that like a I'll stop going and being going to
lose a bunch of money. And so you know, it's
been put the team in a predictament or of the years.
Everything's available in the app. Anybody can get it in
the app these days. I've left CBS, of course five
(11:07):
years ago, so I don't know where they've taken it,
but I still do get long receipts, though maybe they've
they've cut back a little bit.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It's such a great example. You know, we often talk
about in marketing obviously paid, earned and owned, and it's
such a great example of how to use something that's
owned by your receipt to market in a really interesting
way that I don't think anyone ever thought about before.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So I think it was fun and I mean to
your original point, right, So, there was a point where
Jimmy Kimmel had a you know, his goal in life
was to eliminate the CBS receipt, and so you had
at one point in time, President Obama came on and
he pulled out a receipt that he had from CBS
on batteries and he explained that he needed the receipt,
(11:51):
and you know, it was important to him. So it
was fun to let that go. We had the Halloween costumes,
you know, it was it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
For your point, Actually, twenty five cents off batteries, you
keep that and work on that. Well, they're right back
speaking of earned owned and paid, Aaron, I know you've
been working with trip Advisor for the and Matt for
the last year. What's great about working on the brand
(12:19):
and what's great about it?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Well, first, the brand itself. I mean it's an iconic brand.
I think you know, with upwards of one hundred and
thirty million active users. It's it's something that most people
are engaged with I use trip Advisor all the time
and my personal travel planning, So in terms of being
a leader in the category, they're it, and that that
(12:43):
alone makes everyone at the agency excited to be part
of what trip Advisor's doing and where it's going. The
past year, we've really been focused on helping elevate the
earned storytelling, really making sure that that real people's stories
are getting told to the press, and making sure that
(13:05):
the press are very familiar with everything that trip Advisor
offers to customers and travelers, and we've helped them with
really amazing programs like their Traveler's Choice Awards program, which
recognizes the best of the best in destinations and hotels
and restaurants and things to do and beaches globally. So
(13:27):
it's been an exciting time and we're just thrilled that
they're one of our newest travel partners.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
For those of you who haven't used trip Advisor, it's
hard to believe anyone hasn't, by the way, but if
you haven't, it's not an online travel agent, right, It's
actually a I think you guys call it a people
powered travel advice engine, which is which is amazing. I mean,
I use it all the time as well. But I'm
fascinated to hear about the story of how it was started,
(13:55):
because you know, there's always a nugget in in the
founder and the original idea, Matt, how was it? How
was trip Adviser originally created?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, and I wish I was I wish I was there.
I know it was. It was created at the upstairs
level of a pizza store, of all places, and so
a pizza restaurant on the second floor. Your classic entrepreneurship story.
And our founder and our CEO for many years until
two years ago is a gentleman named Steve Coffer and
(14:28):
a visionary legend within the travel industry and a mentor
of mine. Is somebody I had the pleasure to work
for for a bit here at trip Advisor. And it's
kind of the classic entrepreneurial situation where you've got a
problem that you're realizing, and as Steve does with many
of his problems, how do you solve it yourself? And
(14:50):
the problem was anytime he went into travel, he was
super passionate about travel. At the time, it was like
brochures written by companies just selling the destiny, and he
had no way to get that real authentic feedback and reviews.
And so he started the company where people could share
travel advice or destinations for hotels, they could start to
(15:13):
share photos, and there was nothing happened. This is twenty
five years ago. This is ninety nine, two thousand and so,
you know, it was for the first of its kind.
And then it had that kind of rudimentary forum community
drive where people just wanted to help each other out
and it just started to catch on like wildfire. But again,
like many startups, there wasn't a business behind it. So
(15:37):
you tried a number of different things, and the team
tried it and just Steve, they tried a number of
different things, and they finally realized, look, we're bringing in
the most passionate, valuable travelers who might give us some
money to bring those travelers to their site, you know,
And so you started what at the time was a
clipbased model where you know, the likes of like an
(16:00):
Expedia or a booking dot com or whatever it may
be at the time, would pay a commission to have
somebody go to their site from our site. And so see,
you finally unlock that business model took i want to say,
over a year two years, and once they had that,
they had a recipe for growth, and so that allowed
(16:23):
them to exist in business. Frankly, and I think there
were a multiple times where they were on the last
month where trip Advisor wouldn't even exist until they pivoted
a couple times and found that business model. From there,
it was really just harnessing the power of the community,
and that is like the early days of network effects
and community building. Steve really helped drive and they since
(16:45):
expanded it obviously from hotels to experiences, to restaurants, and
it caught fire globally, which is the other unique kind
of value proposition, which is when you go to any
country we were talking about Tokyo before Brett, any country
you go to, if you see the traveler's choice, are
the best of the best logos on that door. Internationally,
(17:07):
you've got a semblance of home, You've got a semblance
of trust. You know, it means something from a community
and it means a lot, and that started to grow. Frankly,
I was in the Caribbean a couple months ago and
I went on a We went on some sort of
boat excursion and the boat next to me had a
giant trip Advisor logo on the side of it, you know,
(17:27):
and everybody's handed out Trip advis their reviews and it's
still to this day extremely valuable to travelers, especially when
you're going internationally. But that was the story of growth
and ultimately it's zigged and zagged many different ways and
got to where it is today. And I'm happy to
talk through the last five years if that's helpful. But
that's the story of an inception. And you know, Steve
(17:50):
is to be applauded, as is the entrepreneurial team that's
set up trip Advisor, because very few businesses make it
a year, very few make it five years. And to
have a successful, sustainable business that will be celebrating its
twenty fifth anniversary next year is is pretty pretty wild.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It's interesting because you talk about reviews and how important
they are. I mean, especially in this world now right
where it's hard as a user or as a consumer
to trust what you see online. You know, there's all
these affiliate sites who are giving reviews, but really just
to be able to point someone in the direction of
(18:28):
whoever it is that's paying them for the click and
or Google. You know, is this, you know, really the
best place or not? It's really difficult, So it really
is a differentiator for you. Talk a little bit about that,
like what's what's been the secret superpower? What have you
done over the last five years in order to you know,
(18:49):
stay in front of that, because it's you know, it's
pretty daunting to go up against all these other sites,
including Google, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, yeah, there's kind of a couple of questions in there,
and I think the first one, though it's not so
much the last five years. I joined for the Advisor
five years ago because of the brand, and I joined
because of the challenge the brand had too but I
joined because of the brand, because it had trust, and
(19:19):
especially at a time I mean, go back to twenty nineteen,
but it's even more prevalent now where trust is fading,
losing trust in online in general, establishments losing trust, everybody's
losing trust. But then you have something that's pure, you know,
that has authenticity, like a Trip Advisor, like a community
where people are just telling each other. It's positive, people
(19:41):
are passionate about it. Travels one of the funnest and
most experiential things that you can have in life, and
so I wanted to be part of a brand that
did that. And so to your question, AT's core, we
have a trust and safety team that is built to
ensure that we're maintaining that on our platform, and that
is a constant didn't search to make sure we're removing
(20:02):
any reviews that might be fraudulent, making sure nobody's gaming
the system, making sure you know, there's nothing happening throughout
this entire system that would challenge our authenticity.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Give me an example of one or two of your
best marketing programs, campaigns, ideas. I mean, we talked about
a brilliant one at CBS, but what about a trip Advisor.
What what are you most proud of?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, I mean we hit on like you know, sometimes
it's these programs that have longevity right in anticipation and
mean something, because our community isn't just travelers, right, The
community is the hotels on the platform, the restaurants, the
things to do. And so again I can't take credit
for the ideation of the concept of traveler's choice and
(20:51):
the best of the best, But if you talk about
something that's rooted in authenticity, right, and so it's reviews,
authentic review over the span of a year. So you
can't just build anticipation two weeks before you're about to
do it, and push and tell everybody to click for
your brand, click for your hotel. This there's none of
that is just purely the reviews on the platform aggregated
(21:15):
into different categories and thoughtfully kind of gone through to
make sure that we have the right winners. And it
means something. And if you think about the industry itself,
I was at a hotel a few days ago and
I happened to I'm an early riser, so I've down
at six in the morning and walking the beach, coming
back and forth, and they had an entire team. They
(21:36):
were doing their stand up for the morning and talking
about what the day was going to be like, what
the weather's going to be like. The whole crew there,
they probably showed up at five point thirty in the morning.
And you think about it, they have to work so
hard to be good at their job, let alone great
at their job day in day out. That's a hotel,
(21:57):
that's a restaurant, that's somebody running an experience going to
be happy every day. You know, like you're going to
get some customers that you wish you didn't have that
would write a bad review if if you had an
off day and at the end of it, you know,
we have the best of the best, that's the top
one percent in the world. And so the incredible pride
(22:17):
that I hope that our partners take in that, which
is entirely it's not a Trip Advisor. I think these
are travelers saying you were the best in the world.
It matters a lot. And because of that, I think,
you know, some of our partners do really cool things.
Dubai one best Destination in the world and they set
up drones and only the way that you know, destination
like Dubai could and they had the whole award, you know,
(22:40):
whole drone set up calling out them as the best
destination from Trip Advisor.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
That wasn't to get the award. That was to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
That was celebrating the award and celebrating the hard you know,
as a DMO. Like the people that work there, they care,
they're passionate about driving people to that destination and they
should be proud because it's to win that year in
year out with everything that's changing, trends, et cetera. And
you know, the Empire State building could they won I
(23:08):
think best experience in the United States at least, and
they turn the whole Empire State Building green, the trip
Advisor green, which they've done two years in a row now,
and it's just those kind of like stunts. But at
the end of the day, that's for the people that
work there. And there's a humanity in this business and
it is a personal person business. And so when we
(23:28):
talk about a platform that we're excited about every year,
year in a year out, and how we can celebrate
different organizations partners that do a fantastic job, Traveler's Choice
is absolutely one of them.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
You know, we talked about earned before. I mean, this
is truly about earned right because you have to any
one of those destinations and or experiences or attractions or
hotels or restaurants actually have to earn their place, you know.
And it's not just one one review, you know, one
credit coming into the restaurant and into the place, which
(24:03):
brings up an interesting question for you erin which is
how do you makey with that? How do you let
people know about the Traveler's Choice awards.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Well, I think part of what Matt was saying is
a lot of the celebration is actually happening with the
award winner. So a lot of it is earned celebration, right,
Like we're seeing a lot of our partners take the
award and give it life and celebrate it. So that's
an amazing thing that happens. But from a marketing perspective,
(24:36):
on the PR side, we obviously use it for storytelling
with the press and the high impact media love this
program because they recognize that it's not about editors going
and choosing or influencers going and choosing. It's about real
people making the choices and we're just we're just feeding
(24:57):
out the results. Right. So from like a media relations standpoint,
we get a lot of coverage, you know, And because
we pulse out the awards throughout the year, like Destinations
we award in January, and the Beaches we award in
February and so on and so forth, we're able to
go back out multiple times through the year to celebrate,
(25:18):
which is great. But then you know, Matt's team has
a very holistic marketing strategy around fueling the excitement for it.
But I think the beauty really is in the fact
that the award recipients are so excited and proud and
celebratory about these awards and that gives it a whole
(25:38):
life unto itself.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Do you think other marketers can learn something from trip
Advisor because I mean it's a very different platform obviously
than what most people use, but or what kind of
brands people have, but it's you know, it's such a disruption,
I think, especially in the travel industry, given it's so
unique compared to everything else you go to. Do you
think there's a there's a lesson for other marketer? Isn't
(26:01):
that well?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
I think when I think about trip Advisor, I think
what others can learn is just I think the power
that it brings in terms of really bringing to life
real people experiences. So I think it sort of goes
to where Mount was talking about in terms of the community.
But I also think it's about highlighting those unique stories globally, right,
(26:25):
like so communities, cultures, history about where they're going, what
makes it unique, and through the lens of real people.
I think today's consumer so jaded by the fake right,
like fake news it's everywhere. So what I'm proud about
in terms of working with trip Advisor is just how
(26:47):
real it is and it's not it's not forced. So
you feel like when you go there as a user.
When I feel like I go there, I know that
I'm getting something real. I'm not being sold, you know
what I'm saying. And I think that is hard for
a lot of brands, but I think it's an important
point because people are so jaded and just used to
(27:10):
being sold.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
When we come back more from our discussion on travel
with Aaron and Matt, welcome back. Next up, we'll talk
(27:36):
about artificial intelligence and how it will impact how we
make our future travel plans. You also have this amazing product,
this AI trip Builder, which I actually hadn't used it
before despite being a you know, aviag trip Advisor user.
(27:57):
As I said, and I just I have this little
anecdote which is we talked about these couples trips. So
I'm planning next year's trip, which is to Havana. I'm Canadian,
so we get to you know, we can go to Cuba.
But more importantly, I you know, I did a lot
of work already, in a lot of research, et cetera,
and then I just it took me hours and hours
(28:17):
and hours to do that and find places, and then
I loaded it into your AI trip builder. What I
was you know, doing and I was going with a
group of friends, et cetera. Et cetera. Gave a couple
of keywords, and I mean, I think seventy percent of
what I had planned came came out on your on
your trip advisors so or your itinerary, which is really amazing.
So how the heck does this work?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Well, I would start it with AI has its greatest
impact when it's actually solving customer problems, right, and so
as we ground ourselves and look at what's happening on
our site and our platform and then customer behavior in general.
In travel, the average length of time it takes to
plan a trip forty one days, So you think about that,
(29:03):
and on average people tend to go to I think
it's something like thirty different sites, and so you have
this like iterative experience that takes place over multiple weeks.
That's complex, convoluted. It's a confusing journey, certainly to a marketer,
because I have no like, you know, what is somebody
trying to do on our platform today? So look at
right restaurant tonight or is it actually planning something a
(29:23):
year from now in Hawaii? And so you know, we
have to mind through that data now that's a problem.
Now people are excited about People like to do that,
but what we try to do is simplify it to
bring people closer to our value proposition. And our core
value proposition is the layer after the first part, which
is as you said, Brett, I'm going to XYZ destination.
(29:45):
I'm going with couples. Here's the things I care about,
here's what I'm passionate about. And the team, the data
science team here has done a phenomenal job pulling out
a night in an entire itinerary that's a mouthful, an
entire tinerary that then provides things to do hotels and restaurants, right,
(30:06):
And of course nobody's going to take that list and
just think I'm going to go do this exact itinerary tomorrow.
I'm glad that it hit seventy percent of your use case,
but it takes what takes a long time jumping across experiences,
looking through restaurants, sorting finding something to be able to
quickly short list and save and then click into those
(30:27):
and start to digest the reviews. Right, Because that again
goes back to how do I take something with general
AI which gives me really good recommendations and then find
a human truth behind it, which is the actual content
that's our users providing from a person a person level.
And so the problem was obviously it takes a long
(30:48):
time to plan travel, as you alluded to. We can
shorten that at least to give you a curated list
using Genera AI, but we believe the passion of travelers
that exist on our platform still need that level and insight.
And if I can dramatically reads the time it takes
you to get to the things to do, the restaurants
or the hotels that you might be interested in, and
get you that real content, that is a huge win.
(31:11):
Now we're seeing it in our product. It's like the
engagements through the roof. The revenue that comes out of
this is through the roof, adoptions through the roof. So
it's super exciting and we think it's differentiated right because
it's grounded in the actual content on your platform that
is over a billion contribution from other people.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
So well, two unique things you have I think you
know because you know AI models are all about the
data that you put in at I mean and the
amount of data et cetera. And you know the two
key things that you have are the reviews as you
just talked about, you know, because I presume that if
you go to chat GPT and say build me itinerary
for for Havana as an example, you know that's going
(31:51):
to ingest a whole bunch of fake reviews and everything
else that's there, right, because it can't really tell the difference.
The second thing is it's real time, right because people
are like presumably if a restaurant or a destination or
an experience has suddenly gone downhill, you're going to know.
But those other large language models are using data from
two years ago, you know, because you don't build a
model every week, et cetera. Right, And I guess maybe
(32:13):
a third thing, which is the long tail, as you've
discussed right, like you're actually you know, otherwise, you know,
most large language models and AI platforms would look at, well,
where's the places and or things and or restaurants and
or destinations, et cetera that the most people go to where,
and you would miss the hidden gems which you can
(32:34):
actually ask for on the on the platform. But presumably
you will also get a bunch of recommendations.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, and it's an interesting mixed right now if you
think about, like, you know, those that are frequent users
of any of these AI platforms are appreciating the nuance
of prompting and how good you have to be to
really get to the thing, Like you know, you can
get great at that and get to the longest multiple
sentence is and then you get something very specific. I
(33:02):
think the average user, this hybrid approach is something we
might start to see, which is, give me a handful
of options, and that's what we're doing right now. Primarily,
it's like really traveling with and then tell me a
little bit of what you're interesting. You can choose from
a list. It makes it a bit easier, so it's
not all reliant on you prompting everything perfectly, and I
do think that brings you better, more unique results that
(33:25):
ultimately get to what might you know, a sophisticated person
that knows exactly how to enter into these systems might
get to and it's going to be interesting. I think
we'll land on a place that's a bit more hybrid
of both. But I do think to your point, because
of the way it's structured its surfaces, for the vast
majority of people, pretty unique offerings that are both times
(33:45):
obviously the reviews on our platform, but also the simplicity
of what you're entering.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
But it must be a challenge, Aaron, I mean, like
as you're advising Matt and the trip Advisor team on
how to go to market with this. I mean, one
of the challenges I presume is that you've got a
community based you know, actual experience, and then on the
other hand, you've got this AI engine, which I mean
just from a communications standpoint, is that a challenge? How
(34:10):
do you, like, how do you talk about those two things?
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I mean, I think it's sort of thinking about it
from the consumer's standpoint and what is going to resonate
with the different types of audiences that you're trying to
speak to. And I think there's a place for both
right for every consumer. I think, I think there's such
a wonderful place to be in those in the community forums.
(34:34):
But I think in terms of the ease of use
in making it fast, the AI tool is incredible. So
I don't think we have to think about them as
two totally separate entities. Rather how do you use them
both together to build the best experience for your next trip?
And I think that's really what Chrip Advisor does so well.
(34:56):
Is it's giving options, but it's also making sure that
it's very much personalized to you.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I have one request, which is, please don't tell all
the couples that I plan the trips for every year
that this thing exists, because otherwise they won't come on
buying trips.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, somebody just ask me for advice. I was like, oh,
I'll get you some advice pretty easily. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Well, I think it's really fascinating. I mean, the brand
is obviously interesting. Your career, Matt has been, you know,
really interesting to watch. I'm sure you're going to do
other great things. The travel industry I just think is
like right for all kinds of disruption and change, and
I'm sure you guys will be in the middle of it.
It's been a fascinating discussion. I really appreciate the time
(35:39):
that you've both spent with me on this and great
example of Partner's Possibility.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Absolutely, I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I'm Brett Marshan. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Partners and Possibility. I hope it provided some insight into
one of the world's most disruptive brand in
I joined trip Advisor five years ago because of the brand,
and I joined because of the challenge the brand had
too But I joined because of the brand, because it
had trust, and especially at a time I may go
back to twenty nineteen, but it's even more prevalent now.
Your trust is fading, losing trust in online in general,
(00:23):
establishment's losing trust, everybody's losing trust. But then you have
something that's pure.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
In an ever changing world. That's all about stained connected,
building connections and seeing where the next collaboration takes a
marketing campaign from an initial brief to the follow through.
What paths are going to make a campaign success more
than a possibility? Hi, I'm Brett Marshand, CEO of Plus Company.
This is partner's and possibility. Online reviews are everything in
(00:59):
travel planning. Trip Advisor has single handedly shaped the way destinations, accommodations, tours,
and even experiences are reviewed. Traveler photos are uploaded, recommendations
are shared on everything from where to stay, what do
we eat, even who to talk to at the front desk.
Trip Advisor has set itself apart as the go to
(01:21):
for travel planning. Today's podcast will introduce the person leading
trip Advisor's global marketing team to discuss how trip Advisor
has become the world's leading and most trusted travel advice platform.
On today's episode, I'll be speaking with Matt Dacy, VP
of Global Marketing at trip Advisor, and Aaron Georgief, managing
partner at Citizen Relations. Aaron was an author of plus
(01:44):
company's twenty twenty four travel Trends report. We called it
Traveling the Great Divide. Today, we'll also talk about one
of trip Advisor's biggest initiatives every year, the Traveler's Choice
Awards program. Well Trip Advisor, a little bit about Matt's background.
(02:05):
We're going to talk about what's going on in the
travel industry, may even touch on AI a little bit.
So I'm really excited about doing this one. I'm a
huge fan of trip Advisor, which I think I told
you already, Matt. I use it a lot, so I
probably know too much about how it works in the communities,
et cetera. But I think our listeners for sure will
want to hear a little bit about you and just
(02:26):
your background and how you got into a role running,
you know, in a global job like you have running
marketing at trip Advisor. So maybe maybe we just start there.
How did you get into marketing, how did you get
to trip Advisor? And what advice do you have for
people who would be who die to have your job?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Oh? Good, good, Well, hopefully not too many people. I
don't want anybody to take it. But Brett, thanks so much.
First of all, it's been a pleasure meeting you and
being on this podcast is exciting to me. So I
appreciate you guys inviting me in the first place. And
there's nothing I like to talk more about than my
Oh so thank you for cleaning up the first question.
(03:03):
But my background is kind of a strange one, which
I think is interesting. I started to study entrepreneurship at Syracuse.
They had a number one entrepreneurship program in the country.
Fell in love with it, obsessed about business books, starting businesses.
I started a laser tag arena, which we had had
(03:24):
a state fair. We moved into a movie rental delivery business,
which we started I started with a couple other founders,
which then we translated into a grocery delivery business. Then
we translated into a grocery delivery software business. And we
did all of these right before Netflix, and then right
(03:44):
before Instacart and right before everybody that made a ton
of money is basically my timing on everything in life,
and so tis everything exactly. So I learned a ton.
It was super passionate about the customer at the end
of the day, and also having an impact that's tangible
where people can see it. Translated that in business school
(04:08):
where I went to business school and started in consulting,
and my consulting was primarily in retail, so again in
an area close to the customer, understanding who the customer is,
why they buy, how we can anticipate customer behavior. And
then I think, more importantly in jobs like I have now,
is how do you actually structure and execute to deliver
(04:28):
for the customer. And I had the pleasure of working
with a number of clients that had large stores, either
globally or in the United States, just big footprints, and
you learn how hard it is to take an idea
from the office and to then go execute it across
ten thousand stores flawlessly, and you start to understand why
that experience is so hard in store when it seems
(04:48):
so easy on a whiteboard. And it gives you, I think,
a pretty unique appreciation for what it takes to get
things done, and from consulting, I went over to CBS
Health where I worked for about seven years, and there
I led a handful of the largest strategic initiatives that
the company, and CBS is huge. Obviously it's US based,
(05:10):
but it's fortune for from a company standpoint, and I
learned just a ton and a lot of my work
was understanding customer behavior, trying to anticipate customer needs, and
then delivering personalized communications. And so I had the pleasure
of running a personalization initiative for over four years where
we really really pushed the needle on what you can
(05:31):
do from a personalization standpoint. Also then led the Extra
Care Loyalty Program, which is one of the largest loyalty
programs in the United States and had a PNL that
was over a billion dollars a large team there. I
learned a tremendous amount. I learned a lot. Again, a
lot of this is from a marketing standpoint. Really its
core understanding what customer's needs are and how we anticipate
(05:54):
them and how we start to move the needle by
delivering personalized communications to the customer. And so then I
had this job that came in front of me now,
which it's taken a twist in the turn and back
to my timing, Brett, I joined right before the pandemic
and traveled so awesome timing about six months before the pandemic.
(06:15):
But I joined at a pretty amazing time. And we'll
talk a bit more about trip Advisor, but it was
at this big turning point for the company, and I
wanted to be part of the brand. I wanted to
be part of a giant transformation that I knew was
going to be multiple years in the making. I just
didn't anticipate the little blip in the middle of a pandemic.
(06:35):
And you know, I'm super excited to be here. It's
a phenomenal company. I have a privilege of working with
and for amazing people at the company now. But that's
my wild journey to kind of get here, and I
think I've picked up a tremendous amount and even at
trip Advisor, understanding SEO from I would argue one of
the best searching optimization teams in the world performance marketing
(06:59):
and just it has been so much that I've been
able to learn and then help grow here at trip Advisor.
It's been frankly a pretty pretty fun journey.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Listen. I have to comment before we move on to
trip Advisor, because you're the You're the guy behind the
infamous mile long CBS receipts right which which was spoofed
like crazy. So I mean, how the heck did you
come up with that? Tell me a little bit about
that story, because I think people would be fascinated to
know that there was some purpose behind that.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, it's not just to be annoying. Yeah, and I
would like to take sole credit, but it's a team
of people that you know at the very extra care
the lawyers brog had been around for twenty years and
it was a fantastic program at the time, super innovative,
and we've always had these offers that come out of
(07:52):
the receipt. At the time, it was one or two offers,
and part of the job was to understand why customers
are not converting to specific categories. So you take oral care.
It's like a customer's been in the store forty times.
I hope they brush their teeth, but not one time
in forty have they purchased oral care. So why have
(08:14):
they not bought it? And what can you do to
overcome whatever barrier? That is to conversion. It might just
be I just don't think of the store this way,
that's not on my list here, whatever it is. And
so we started to deliver personalized offers. Frequent customers haven't
bought this category, but bought adjacent categories, and we started
to introduce those offers in a personalized manner, and people
(08:35):
started to use them, and then they started to use
more of them. And it's basically something that if you
think about it, it just starts to print money because
you're giving the customer what they want and it's starting
to change behavior. And so then you go from how
do I convert somebody to how do I actually drive
a trip back to the store which then carries a
basket of fifteen twenty dollars? And then how do I
(08:58):
start to sell adjacent products? So now you've got a
conversion offer, you've got an adjacent offer, you've got a
trip building offer. And then you're like, well, you know what,
partners will fund this because of course major brands want
to have their offers there, so now they're paid for,
and so then it's like, well, what if I did
five more offer? And so then what starts to happen
(09:20):
is you start to move and people are attracted to
obviously making money, and then people are attracted from a
customer standpoint to saving money. And that's probably one of
the most unique things. Like we had a stat at
some point that over seventy to eighty percent of Americans
have less than one thousand dollars in their savings account.
And then you think about the purpose back to that,
(09:41):
which is like extra Care is a program itself exists
to help people save money. And so you start to
create these personalized offers. They're relevant, they work, people want more,
and the recy got longer, and I think over three
or four years we five x the revenue and we're
talking like hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental revenue
(10:02):
from a revenue standpoint through these activations. And then of
course when you have partners engaged, it introduced a whole
level of profitability. This is before the retail media networks,
you know, started to really scale, and so that's kind
of how it came about. And then of course we
had the internal debates, right, which is like Okay, I
don't want like why do we have a fourteen you know,
(10:25):
off of receipts? Yeah, how long do we let it
get Yeah, and then it's like, well, let's shift to digital,
because so like the common things, of course, everything should
be digital. So we put everything on the phone. When
we started serving our customers about taking away the paper receipts,
they didn't want us to. And so you've got a
whole group of customers that are driving on this value,
(10:45):
that are saying, don't take that away from me. I
like to cut those that put them in my wallet
and put them in my purse. And that's how I shot.
And so do not do that. And if you do
that like a I'll stop going and being going to
lose a bunch of money. And so you know, it's
been put the team in a predictament or of the years.
Everything's available in the app. Anybody can get it in
the app these days. I've left CBS, of course five
(11:07):
years ago, so I don't know where they've taken it,
but I still do get long receipts, though maybe they've
they've cut back a little bit.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It's such a great example. You know, we often talk
about in marketing obviously paid, earned and owned, and it's
such a great example of how to use something that's
owned by your receipt to market in a really interesting
way that I don't think anyone ever thought about before.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So I think it was fun and I mean to
your original point, right, So, there was a point where
Jimmy Kimmel had a you know, his goal in life
was to eliminate the CBS receipt, and so you had
at one point in time, President Obama came on and
he pulled out a receipt that he had from CBS
on batteries and he explained that he needed the receipt,
(11:51):
and you know, it was important to him. So it
was fun to let that go. We had the Halloween costumes,
you know, it was it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
For your point, Actually, twenty five cents off batteries, you
keep that and work on that. Well, they're right back
speaking of earned owned and paid, Aaron, I know you've
been working with trip Advisor for the and Matt for
the last year. What's great about working on the brand
(12:19):
and what's great about it?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Well, first, the brand itself. I mean it's an iconic brand.
I think you know, with upwards of one hundred and
thirty million active users. It's it's something that most people
are engaged with I use trip Advisor all the time
and my personal travel planning, So in terms of being
a leader in the category, they're it, and that that
(12:43):
alone makes everyone at the agency excited to be part
of what trip Advisor's doing and where it's going. The
past year, we've really been focused on helping elevate the
earned storytelling, really making sure that that real people's stories
are getting told to the press, and making sure that
(13:05):
the press are very familiar with everything that trip Advisor
offers to customers and travelers, and we've helped them with
really amazing programs like their Traveler's Choice Awards program, which
recognizes the best of the best in destinations and hotels
and restaurants and things to do and beaches globally. So
(13:27):
it's been an exciting time and we're just thrilled that
they're one of our newest travel partners.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
For those of you who haven't used trip Advisor, it's
hard to believe anyone hasn't, by the way, but if
you haven't, it's not an online travel agent, right, It's
actually a I think you guys call it a people
powered travel advice engine, which is which is amazing. I mean,
I use it all the time as well. But I'm
fascinated to hear about the story of how it was started,
(13:55):
because you know, there's always a nugget in in the
founder and the original idea, Matt, how was it? How
was trip Adviser originally created?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, and I wish I was I wish I was there.
I know it was. It was created at the upstairs
level of a pizza store, of all places, and so
a pizza restaurant on the second floor. Your classic entrepreneurship story.
And our founder and our CEO for many years until
two years ago is a gentleman named Steve Coffer and
(14:28):
a visionary legend within the travel industry and a mentor
of mine. Is somebody I had the pleasure to work
for for a bit here at trip Advisor. And it's
kind of the classic entrepreneurial situation where you've got a
problem that you're realizing, and as Steve does with many
of his problems, how do you solve it yourself? And
(14:50):
the problem was anytime he went into travel, he was
super passionate about travel. At the time, it was like
brochures written by companies just selling the destiny, and he
had no way to get that real authentic feedback and reviews.
And so he started the company where people could share
travel advice or destinations for hotels, they could start to
(15:13):
share photos, and there was nothing happened. This is twenty
five years ago. This is ninety nine, two thousand and so,
you know, it was for the first of its kind.
And then it had that kind of rudimentary forum community
drive where people just wanted to help each other out
and it just started to catch on like wildfire. But again,
like many startups, there wasn't a business behind it. So
(15:37):
you tried a number of different things, and the team
tried it and just Steve, they tried a number of
different things, and they finally realized, look, we're bringing in
the most passionate, valuable travelers who might give us some
money to bring those travelers to their site, you know,
And so you started what at the time was a
clipbased model where you know, the likes of like an
(16:00):
Expedia or a booking dot com or whatever it may
be at the time, would pay a commission to have
somebody go to their site from our site. And so see,
you finally unlock that business model took i want to say,
over a year two years, and once they had that,
they had a recipe for growth, and so that allowed
(16:23):
them to exist in business. Frankly, and I think there
were a multiple times where they were on the last
month where trip Advisor wouldn't even exist until they pivoted
a couple times and found that business model. From there,
it was really just harnessing the power of the community,
and that is like the early days of network effects
and community building. Steve really helped drive and they since
(16:45):
expanded it obviously from hotels to experiences, to restaurants, and
it caught fire globally, which is the other unique kind
of value proposition, which is when you go to any
country we were talking about Tokyo before Brett, any country
you go to, if you see the traveler's choice, are
the best of the best logos on that door. Internationally,
(17:07):
you've got a semblance of home, You've got a semblance
of trust. You know, it means something from a community
and it means a lot, and that started to grow. Frankly,
I was in the Caribbean a couple months ago and
I went on a We went on some sort of
boat excursion and the boat next to me had a
giant trip Advisor logo on the side of it, you know,
(17:27):
and everybody's handed out Trip advis their reviews and it's
still to this day extremely valuable to travelers, especially when
you're going internationally. But that was the story of growth
and ultimately it's zigged and zagged many different ways and
got to where it is today. And I'm happy to
talk through the last five years if that's helpful. But
that's the story of an inception. And you know, Steve
(17:50):
is to be applauded, as is the entrepreneurial team that's
set up trip Advisor, because very few businesses make it
a year, very few make it five years. And to
have a successful, sustainable business that will be celebrating its
twenty fifth anniversary next year is is pretty pretty wild.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It's interesting because you talk about reviews and how important
they are. I mean, especially in this world now right
where it's hard as a user or as a consumer
to trust what you see online. You know, there's all
these affiliate sites who are giving reviews, but really just
to be able to point someone in the direction of
(18:28):
whoever it is that's paying them for the click and
or Google. You know, is this, you know, really the
best place or not? It's really difficult, So it really
is a differentiator for you. Talk a little bit about that,
like what's what's been the secret superpower? What have you
done over the last five years in order to you know,
(18:49):
stay in front of that, because it's you know, it's
pretty daunting to go up against all these other sites,
including Google, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, yeah, there's kind of a couple of questions in there,
and I think the first one, though it's not so
much the last five years. I joined for the Advisor
five years ago because of the brand, and I joined
because of the challenge the brand had too but I
joined because of the brand, because it had trust, and
(19:19):
especially at a time I mean, go back to twenty nineteen,
but it's even more prevalent now where trust is fading,
losing trust in online in general, establishments losing trust, everybody's
losing trust. But then you have something that's pure, you know,
that has authenticity, like a Trip Advisor, like a community
where people are just telling each other. It's positive, people
(19:41):
are passionate about it. Travels one of the funnest and
most experiential things that you can have in life, and
so I wanted to be part of a brand that
did that. And so to your question, AT's core, we
have a trust and safety team that is built to
ensure that we're maintaining that on our platform, and that
is a constant didn't search to make sure we're removing
(20:02):
any reviews that might be fraudulent, making sure nobody's gaming
the system, making sure you know, there's nothing happening throughout
this entire system that would challenge our authenticity.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Give me an example of one or two of your
best marketing programs, campaigns, ideas. I mean, we talked about
a brilliant one at CBS, but what about a trip Advisor.
What what are you most proud of?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, I mean we hit on like you know, sometimes
it's these programs that have longevity right in anticipation and
mean something, because our community isn't just travelers, right, The
community is the hotels on the platform, the restaurants, the
things to do. And so again I can't take credit
for the ideation of the concept of traveler's choice and
(20:51):
the best of the best, But if you talk about
something that's rooted in authenticity, right, and so it's reviews,
authentic review over the span of a year. So you
can't just build anticipation two weeks before you're about to
do it, and push and tell everybody to click for
your brand, click for your hotel. This there's none of
that is just purely the reviews on the platform aggregated
(21:15):
into different categories and thoughtfully kind of gone through to
make sure that we have the right winners. And it
means something. And if you think about the industry itself,
I was at a hotel a few days ago and
I happened to I'm an early riser, so I've down
at six in the morning and walking the beach, coming
back and forth, and they had an entire team. They
(21:36):
were doing their stand up for the morning and talking
about what the day was going to be like, what
the weather's going to be like. The whole crew there,
they probably showed up at five point thirty in the morning.
And you think about it, they have to work so
hard to be good at their job, let alone great
at their job day in day out. That's a hotel,
(21:57):
that's a restaurant, that's somebody running an experience going to
be happy every day. You know, like you're going to
get some customers that you wish you didn't have that
would write a bad review if if you had an
off day and at the end of it, you know,
we have the best of the best, that's the top
one percent in the world. And so the incredible pride
(22:17):
that I hope that our partners take in that, which
is entirely it's not a Trip Advisor. I think these
are travelers saying you were the best in the world.
It matters a lot. And because of that, I think,
you know, some of our partners do really cool things.
Dubai one best Destination in the world and they set
up drones and only the way that you know, destination
like Dubai could and they had the whole award, you know,
(22:40):
whole drone set up calling out them as the best
destination from Trip Advisor.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
That wasn't to get the award. That was to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
That was celebrating the award and celebrating the hard you know,
as a DMO. Like the people that work there, they care,
they're passionate about driving people to that destination and they
should be proud because it's to win that year in
year out with everything that's changing, trends, et cetera. And
you know, the Empire State building could they won I
(23:08):
think best experience in the United States at least, and
they turn the whole Empire State Building green, the trip
Advisor green, which they've done two years in a row now,
and it's just those kind of like stunts. But at
the end of the day, that's for the people that
work there. And there's a humanity in this business and
it is a personal person business. And so when we
(23:28):
talk about a platform that we're excited about every year,
year in a year out, and how we can celebrate
different organizations partners that do a fantastic job, Traveler's Choice
is absolutely one of them.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
You know, we talked about earned before. I mean, this
is truly about earned right because you have to any
one of those destinations and or experiences or attractions or
hotels or restaurants actually have to earn their place, you know.
And it's not just one one review, you know, one
credit coming into the restaurant and into the place, which
(24:03):
brings up an interesting question for you erin which is
how do you makey with that? How do you let
people know about the Traveler's Choice awards.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Well, I think part of what Matt was saying is
a lot of the celebration is actually happening with the
award winner. So a lot of it is earned celebration, right,
Like we're seeing a lot of our partners take the
award and give it life and celebrate it. So that's
an amazing thing that happens. But from a marketing perspective,
(24:36):
on the PR side, we obviously use it for storytelling
with the press and the high impact media love this
program because they recognize that it's not about editors going
and choosing or influencers going and choosing. It's about real
people making the choices and we're just we're just feeding
(24:57):
out the results. Right. So from like a media relations standpoint,
we get a lot of coverage, you know, And because
we pulse out the awards throughout the year, like Destinations
we award in January, and the Beaches we award in
February and so on and so forth, we're able to
go back out multiple times through the year to celebrate,
(25:18):
which is great. But then you know, Matt's team has
a very holistic marketing strategy around fueling the excitement for it.
But I think the beauty really is in the fact
that the award recipients are so excited and proud and
celebratory about these awards and that gives it a whole
(25:38):
life unto itself.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Do you think other marketers can learn something from trip
Advisor because I mean it's a very different platform obviously
than what most people use, but or what kind of
brands people have, but it's you know, it's such a disruption,
I think, especially in the travel industry, given it's so
unique compared to everything else you go to. Do you
think there's a there's a lesson for other marketer? Isn't
(26:01):
that well?
Speaker 3 (26:02):
I think when I think about trip Advisor, I think
what others can learn is just I think the power
that it brings in terms of really bringing to life
real people experiences. So I think it sort of goes
to where Mount was talking about in terms of the community.
But I also think it's about highlighting those unique stories globally, right,
(26:25):
like so communities, cultures, history about where they're going, what
makes it unique, and through the lens of real people.
I think today's consumer so jaded by the fake right,
like fake news it's everywhere. So what I'm proud about
in terms of working with trip Advisor is just how
(26:47):
real it is and it's not it's not forced. So
you feel like when you go there as a user.
When I feel like I go there, I know that
I'm getting something real. I'm not being sold, you know
what I'm saying. And I think that is hard for
a lot of brands, but I think it's an important
point because people are so jaded and just used to
(27:10):
being sold.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
When we come back more from our discussion on travel
with Aaron and Matt, welcome back. Next up, we'll talk
(27:36):
about artificial intelligence and how it will impact how we
make our future travel plans. You also have this amazing product,
this AI trip Builder, which I actually hadn't used it
before despite being a you know, aviag trip Advisor user.
(27:57):
As I said, and I just I have this little
anecdote which is we talked about these couples trips. So
I'm planning next year's trip, which is to Havana. I'm Canadian,
so we get to you know, we can go to Cuba.
But more importantly, I you know, I did a lot
of work already, in a lot of research, et cetera,
and then I just it took me hours and hours
(28:17):
and hours to do that and find places, and then
I loaded it into your AI trip builder. What I
was you know, doing and I was going with a
group of friends, et cetera. Et cetera. Gave a couple
of keywords, and I mean, I think seventy percent of
what I had planned came came out on your on
your trip advisors so or your itinerary, which is really amazing.
So how the heck does this work?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Well, I would start it with AI has its greatest
impact when it's actually solving customer problems, right, and so
as we ground ourselves and look at what's happening on
our site and our platform and then customer behavior in general.
In travel, the average length of time it takes to
plan a trip forty one days, So you think about that,
(29:03):
and on average people tend to go to I think
it's something like thirty different sites, and so you have
this like iterative experience that takes place over multiple weeks.
That's complex, convoluted. It's a confusing journey, certainly to a marketer,
because I have no like, you know, what is somebody
trying to do on our platform today? So look at
right restaurant tonight or is it actually planning something a
(29:23):
year from now in Hawaii? And so you know, we
have to mind through that data now that's a problem.
Now people are excited about People like to do that,
but what we try to do is simplify it to
bring people closer to our value proposition. And our core
value proposition is the layer after the first part, which
is as you said, Brett, I'm going to XYZ destination.
(29:45):
I'm going with couples. Here's the things I care about,
here's what I'm passionate about. And the team, the data
science team here has done a phenomenal job pulling out
a night in an entire itinerary that's a mouthful, an
entire tinerary that then provides things to do hotels and restaurants, right,
(30:06):
And of course nobody's going to take that list and
just think I'm going to go do this exact itinerary tomorrow.
I'm glad that it hit seventy percent of your use case,
but it takes what takes a long time jumping across experiences,
looking through restaurants, sorting finding something to be able to
quickly short list and save and then click into those
(30:27):
and start to digest the reviews. Right, Because that again
goes back to how do I take something with general
AI which gives me really good recommendations and then find
a human truth behind it, which is the actual content
that's our users providing from a person a person level.
And so the problem was obviously it takes a long
(30:48):
time to plan travel, as you alluded to. We can
shorten that at least to give you a curated list
using Genera AI, but we believe the passion of travelers
that exist on our platform still need that level and insight.
And if I can dramatically reads the time it takes
you to get to the things to do, the restaurants
or the hotels that you might be interested in, and
get you that real content, that is a huge win.
(31:11):
Now we're seeing it in our product. It's like the
engagements through the roof. The revenue that comes out of
this is through the roof, adoptions through the roof. So
it's super exciting and we think it's differentiated right because
it's grounded in the actual content on your platform that
is over a billion contribution from other people.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
So well, two unique things you have I think you
know because you know AI models are all about the
data that you put in at I mean and the
amount of data et cetera. And you know the two
key things that you have are the reviews as you
just talked about, you know, because I presume that if
you go to chat GPT and say build me itinerary
for for Havana as an example, you know that's going
(31:51):
to ingest a whole bunch of fake reviews and everything
else that's there, right, because it can't really tell the difference.
The second thing is it's real time, right because people
are like presumably if a restaurant or a destination or
an experience has suddenly gone downhill, you're going to know.
But those other large language models are using data from
two years ago, you know, because you don't build a
model every week, et cetera. Right, And I guess maybe
(32:13):
a third thing, which is the long tail, as you've
discussed right, like you're actually you know, otherwise, you know,
most large language models and AI platforms would look at, well,
where's the places and or things and or restaurants and
or destinations, et cetera that the most people go to where,
and you would miss the hidden gems which you can
(32:34):
actually ask for on the on the platform. But presumably
you will also get a bunch of recommendations.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, and it's an interesting mixed right now if you
think about, like, you know, those that are frequent users
of any of these AI platforms are appreciating the nuance
of prompting and how good you have to be to
really get to the thing, Like you know, you can
get great at that and get to the longest multiple
sentence is and then you get something very specific. I
(33:02):
think the average user, this hybrid approach is something we
might start to see, which is, give me a handful
of options, and that's what we're doing right now. Primarily,
it's like really traveling with and then tell me a
little bit of what you're interesting. You can choose from
a list. It makes it a bit easier, so it's
not all reliant on you prompting everything perfectly, and I
do think that brings you better, more unique results that
(33:25):
ultimately get to what might you know, a sophisticated person
that knows exactly how to enter into these systems might
get to and it's going to be interesting. I think
we'll land on a place that's a bit more hybrid
of both. But I do think to your point, because
of the way it's structured its surfaces, for the vast
majority of people, pretty unique offerings that are both times
(33:45):
obviously the reviews on our platform, but also the simplicity
of what you're entering.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
But it must be a challenge, Aaron, I mean, like
as you're advising Matt and the trip Advisor team on
how to go to market with this. I mean, one
of the challenges I presume is that you've got a
community based you know, actual experience, and then on the
other hand, you've got this AI engine, which I mean
just from a communications standpoint, is that a challenge? How
(34:10):
do you, like, how do you talk about those two things?
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I mean, I think it's sort of thinking about it
from the consumer's standpoint and what is going to resonate
with the different types of audiences that you're trying to
speak to. And I think there's a place for both
right for every consumer. I think, I think there's such
a wonderful place to be in those in the community forums.
(34:34):
But I think in terms of the ease of use
in making it fast, the AI tool is incredible. So
I don't think we have to think about them as
two totally separate entities. Rather how do you use them
both together to build the best experience for your next trip?
And I think that's really what Chrip Advisor does so well.
(34:56):
Is it's giving options, but it's also making sure that
it's very much personalized to you.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I have one request, which is, please don't tell all
the couples that I plan the trips for every year
that this thing exists, because otherwise they won't come on
buying trips.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, somebody just ask me for advice. I was like, oh,
I'll get you some advice pretty easily. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Well, I think it's really fascinating. I mean, the brand
is obviously interesting. Your career, Matt has been, you know,
really interesting to watch. I'm sure you're going to do
other great things. The travel industry I just think is
like right for all kinds of disruption and change, and
I'm sure you guys will be in the middle of it.
It's been a fascinating discussion. I really appreciate the time
(35:39):
that you've both spent with me on this and great
example of Partner's Possibility.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Absolutely, I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I'm Brett Marshan. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Partners and Possibility. I hope it provided some insight into
one of the world's most disruptive brand in
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