{"id":17870,"date":"2015-04-06T08:54:02","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T12:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=17870"},"modified":"2015-04-06T10:21:41","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T14:21:41","slug":"apple-maps-now-testing-tripadvisor-and-booking-com-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/06\/apple-maps-now-testing-tripadvisor-and-booking-com-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Maps Now Testing TripAdvisor and Booking.com Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

It appear that Apple, at least in the hotel world, is testing the use of reviews beyond their traditional partner Yelp.<\/p>\n

AppleInsider reported<\/a> this morning the appearance of reviews from TripAdvisor and Booking.com on a limited number of hotel listings within Apple Maps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It makes sense that Apple would expand their review partnership beyond Yelp. While Yelp has a great many reviews in restaurants, their presence in hotels is not as expansive as either booking.com or TripAdvisor.<\/p>\n

What is not clear is if this a test\u00a0or a final solution. There are, more questions than answers. It is\u00a0an option for certain hotel chains, will\u00a0TA reviews will just be used on hotels and will, at some point in the future, multiple review sources show?<\/p>\n

This does though show how Apple, unlike Google, will partner with market leaders rather than trying to either take the reviews unbidden and not compete directly by trying to do it themselves. Its not that they wouldn’t do it themselves if it becomes necessary or beneficial to do so, its just not the default setting.<\/p>\n

If you have Apple Maps on your desktop this link<\/a> will take you to an example.<\/p>\n

Greg Sterling has good coverage<\/a> of this move vis a vis international searches and notes that TA and booking.com are predominantly visible outside the US. \u00a0He notes:<\/p>\n

A search for \u201crestaurants, Prague\u201d or \u201crestaurants, Mexico City\u201d show Yelp results, while restaurant searches in most\u00a0European capitals\u00a0show TripAdvisor content. It\u2019s not clear whether Yelp is simply better in these cities or whether Apple hasn\u2019t yet gotten around to replacing the Yelp content.<\/em><\/p>\n

It goes on: a search for \u201chotels, Vienna Austria\u201d displays reviews from Booking.com while \u201cmuseums,\u00a0Vienna Austria\u201d continues to show Yelp results.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yelp has good\u00a0European restaurant reviews coverage. However in a majority of cases Apple appears to have entirely replaced them with\u00a0TripAdvisor reviews. Yet TripAdvisor probably\u00a0has more comprehensive and better hotel reviews coverage than Booking.com. It strikes me as odd that\u00a0Apple would use\u00a0Booking.com instead of TripAdvisor for hotel reviews \u2014 unless the capacity to book directly through the latter\u00a0is being valued. (TripAdvisor is predominantly a lead-gen site for other booking services.)<\/em><\/p>\n

TripAdvisor has always been important to hotel operators but now it must become a new focus for restaurants outside the US (if it wasn\u2019t already). And Booking.com gains new prominence among hotel\u00a0review sites.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appear that Apple, at least in the hotel world, is testing the use of reviews beyond their traditional partner Yelp. AppleInsider reported this morning the appearance of reviews from TripAdvisor and Booking.com on a limited number of hotel listings within Apple Maps. It makes sense that Apple would expand their review partnership beyond Yelp. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-plus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17870"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17877,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870\/revisions\/17877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}