Do You Use Trip Advisor? Warning!

Do you use Trip Advisor?  About half of those who call us report that they found us on TripAdvisor.com. That's huge for a small business.  When half of your customers come from one source, you kind of feel like you should be paying attention.

Because we track the sources of hits to our website using a product called Google Analytics, we know that our guests also find us using BedandBreakfast.com, the New Mexico Bed & Breakfast Association, the Taos Association of Bed and Breakfast Inns, the Taos Vacation Guide, and the Taos Chamber of Commerce.  There are at least another dozen sources of hits to laposadadetaos.com originating with companies other than Trip Advisor who provide unbiased information regarding destinations in Taos.

Within the last quarter, however, TripAdvisor.com has overtaken everyone on our Google Analytics Report to become the #2 means of finding us -- behind only the ever-omnipresent "Google Organic Search."  TripAdvisor.com recently moved into the Top 30 websites on the entire Planet!  With 60,000,000 hits per month, its volume dwarfs all other Social Networking Travel sites.  The increase in hits to our website from this one site has been in excess of 5000%.

Incredible isn't it?

Because we have recently moved into the top slot on TripAdvisor.com's listing of Taos County B&B's, we're also working hard to merit that listing (of course, to really hold onto this type of thing, you have to be having fun doing it!).  A competitor who also sometimes inhabits the #1 spot doesn't include breakfast in the price of his lodging.   Regardless of the exact placement, being at or near the top of TripAdvisor's listings has also brought us not only more hits to the website, but a healthy increase in business.

I wish that I could end this blog entry there with the sunny story of success.  Not so, however.

As a Board Member of the Taos Association of Bed and Breakfast Inns, I'm always interested in the overall trends in the industry.  Trip Advisor's impact on lodgers in Taos continues to play itself out, but we can already see that it's doing both good and bad things in our small town.

On the good side, Trip Advisor is available for visitors to get some additional information about the choices in Taos.  

On the bad side, the choices in "Taos" that Trip Advisor is showing are incomplete and in some cases downright misleading.  Trip Advisor is arbitrarily excluding some of the top choices available to visitors by using an ancient Zip Code map that ignores some of the best B&B's in the entire Southwestern U.S.  

In some cases, B&B's are not listed as "Taos" and you cannot find them unless you know the name of the tiny old Zip Code they are in (these aren't incorporated areas, by the way).  Another way to find them is to find the tiny little green print near the top of the page that has geographical breakdowns.  If you can find it, click on "Taos County," please.

In an effort to make full disclosure: as you have probably guessed, La Posada isn't excluded from the Taos listings.  We have no financial interest in the businesses who are being hurt by this.  Our interest is in making sure that all visitors to Taos get complete information.  

I've addressed this issue before and I'm part of a continuing effort by various professional associations to get Trip Advisor to fix the problem.  Please understand that this effort has been going on for years.  Trip Advisor's corporate mentality, however, is clearly self-absorbed and defensive.  They not only cannot see how their arbitrary geographic designations are destroying small businesses, they deny that it could possibly be true.  Very defensive!

Problem is that the numbers don't lie and TripAdvisor doesn't care.  I've heard various local businesses discussing litigation.  

In the meantime, please don't use Trip Advisor as your only source of information.  Use it for reviews, but please realize that it is not authoritative.  What you can count on is that TripAdvisor.com's listing for Taos will be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading and arbitrary.  

We recommend that you use at least one other source of information when planning your Taos trip, please.