Customers that access User-Generated Content (UGC) sites are likely to spend more time and more money on stays in the UK, according to a recent study.
TripAdvisor, a company that provides an online travel community for collating user-generated travel information, has released a study on the impact of online review sites on customer behaviour and the UK tourism and hospitality industry.
The report claimed that page views of TripAdvisor content resulted in bookings worth around GBP1.7bn, on tourism expenditure in the UK in 2011. This comprises around 2.2 percent of total tourism expenditure in the UK for that year.
The study also showed that around 25 percent of tourists stayed longer, spent more or participated in more activities in the UK after using travel review sites. The average domestic spend per trip by users of TripAdvisor UK is around 20 percent more than the average online booking customer, according to the report.
Christine Petersen, the president of TripAdvisor for Business, said, ‘The travel industry has long been ahead of the curve in adopting UGC and really tapping into this to benefit both consumers and businesses alike. Property and site owners that have been truly embracing and engaging with this content not only benefit through the consumer feedback they receive but they have also raised the quality standards of the industry as a whole in the UK.
We knew that our community of over 56 million unique users contribute great consumer insight to each other and the industry but now we see that sites like ours can also drive real economic value.’
