Over the past couple of months, TripAdvisor has been participating in Google’s hotel metasearch program. For selected hotels, consumers are seeing TripAdvisor as a place to book.
Clicking on the TripAdvisor “Book” button often takes a consumer a specific instant booking page(“Book on TripAdvisor!”), where the brand collects payment on behalf of the hotel.
In this circumstance, TripAdvisor is, in essence, acting as an online travel agency, or OTA —though the company might dispute that label. So when it wears its OTA hat, so to speak, it makes sense that the brand would test competing with other OTAs on Google for consumer attention.
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