Mumbai :  TripAdvisor®, the world’s largest travel site*, today announced the official launch of TripAdvisor Business Listings for Indian property owners, helping hoteliers to increase their business’s exposure across all TripAdvisor-branded sites and encourage more direct bookings. The announcement follows a successful free trial of Business Listings launched exclusively on the tripadvisor.in site. With the official launch of Business Listings on a global scale, Indian accommodation businesses can now benefit from international exposure in front of TripAdvisor’s worldwide community of more than 50 million unique monthly visitors*.

A Business Listings subscription allows properties to add their direct contact information—such as a website link, email address and phone number—to their property pages on TripAdvisor. The product also allows subscribers to add special offers on high-visibility pages.

“The time is right for Indian hoteliers to take advantage of TripAdvisor Business Listings on an international scale, build their businesses online and increase their property’s exposure in front of TripAdvisor’s large global audience,” said Julio Bruno, Global Vice President of Sales, TripAdvisor. “Ahead of today’s launch, we have been laying the groundwork in India, More than 90 percent of the hoteliers we’ve contacted since April 2011 have already participated in our initiative to get accommodation businesses in India online. Hotels from India’s 28 states and seven union territories are now featured on the site, and over 800,000 leads (clicks and email contact) have been generated for Indian hoteliers from domestic traffic alone via our free trial of the product on tripadvisor.in over the past ten months.”

Nikhil Ganju, Country Manager, TripAdvisor India, said, “Visits to India hotel pages on TripAdvisor have more than doubled in the last year demonstrating that now, more than ever, international travellers are using TripAdvisor to search for hotels in India. With page views for India destinations and accommodation businesses on the rise across all TripAdvisor domains, the time is right for Indian hoteliers to invest in the new improved Business Listing product in order to reach more potential guests around the world.”

Free Master Class Series for Hoteliers

TripAdvisor is also launching a series of free Master Class events to help Indian hotel businesses develop their online presence through TripAdvisor’s free marketing resources and tools. The Master Classes cover a range of online marketing best practices with live site demonstrations from TripAdvisor staff and other industry experts.

Julio Bruno added, “Following the success of TripAdvisor’s Master Class series globally, we are now bringing these popular free educational events to India. Through these master class events, we aim to educate Indian hoteliers on how to maximise their presence on TripAdvisor, enabling them to thrive in today’s competitive environment and stand out from the crowd. More than 30,000 properties in the Asia Pacific region have already registered on our site for free and started taking advantage of the resources and tools we make available to businesses. We are positive about being able to replicate similar success in the Indian market.”

Upcoming Master Classes:

·         Mumbai, India – Tuesday 10 April, 2012

·         New Delhi, India – Thursday 12 April, 2012