TripAdvisor goes video

March 07, 2007 | Online Travel

TripAdvisor now allows travelers to quickly and easily post their vacation videos. What's more, TripAdvisor also allows travel marketers to showcase their wares by uploading their videos.

TripAdvisor now allows travelers to quickly and easily post their vacation videos. TripAdvisor also allows travel marketers to showcase their wares by uploading their videos. Thousands of TripAdvisor travelers already uploaded their videos and hundreds of thousands more viewed them, revealing a strong demand for ever more descriptive ways to tell a story or research a trip.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million. Video can convey so much emotion so quickly,” said Christine Petersen, senior vice president of marketing for TripAdvisor. “We’re thrilled to offer the elegance of the written word, the power of candid photos and now the punch of video, so that whatever the experience, our travelers and the hospitality industry alike can share their information most effectively.”

Video has been integrated into nearly every facet of TripAdvisor, with the largest percentage of activity in the destination category, accounting for more than 55 percent of uploads. “Jekyll Island specifically set out to maximize our exposure on TripAdvisor because it is the place to be in the travel world, and the video upload was easy and quick,” said Larissa Harris of the Jekyll Island Authority. “We’re very excited by the quick response we’ve seen - our video was voted one of the ten best on the site right off the bat!”

Travelers have been quick to load their personal libraries of travel videos, like a Minnesota-based TripAdvisor traveler “sdcash,” who loaded 19 videos including “Ring of Kerry,” a travel memoir of Ireland that’s the second most popular video on the site. “I’m a huge fan of TripAdvisor, and I think adding the video category was a great idea. When I research a destination on TripAdvisor, it is so convenient to see reviews, pictures, and videos in one place.” said sdcash. “Videos show more of the experience. You can actually see what people are talking about in their reviews, and you can more easily picture yourself there.”

The attractions, restaurants and hotels categories have also enjoyed large amounts of early activity. Hotels can upload their own promotional videos, helping users make their hotel decisions. “...this is a very intuitive and simple platform to use and also well guided for the newbies who have never shared videos before,” remarked Guillaume Thevenot, an online hospitality industry specialist and author of hotel-blogs.com, who tested the TripAdvisor video upload for one of his hotel videos. “The smallest B&B can potentially introduce their property to millions of interested travelers by uploading compelling video tours.”

TripAdvisor’s goal is to provide as wide a variety of travel video content as possible, and welcomes videos from professional production companies and travel video websites. In addition to user-generated video from TripAdvisor travelers, an agreement with TravelPod.com has added thousands of colorful video vignettes to the site. TripAdvisor also features professional videos from TurnHere, an internet video studio, offering an insider introduction to hundreds of destinations from the perspective of local filmmakers.

Uploading a video is fast and simple at http://www.tripadvisor.com/PostVideo. Videos can be as long as 10 minutes each, and can be uploaded in AVI, Quicktime, Windows Media or MPEG4 formats. View TripAdvisor’s most popular and most recently-uploaded videos at http://www.tripadvisor.com/VideoHome.