A search on Kayak.com will now allow users to access TripAdvisor.com hotel reviews.
By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com contributor
If you?re the type of traveler who searches for hotels on Kayak.com and then clicks over to TripAdvisor.com to read reviews from other travelers, the two companies would like you to stop.
Clicking from one site to the other, that is.
On Thursday, the sites unveiled a new arrangement in which the results from Kayak searches will include TripAdvisor reviews. Combining meta-search and user reviews, the companies hope to streamline the user experience and adapt to the changing landscape of online travel.
?We?re very comprehensive in search, but TripAdvisor has great content that people find very valuable,? said Robert Birge, Kayak?s chief marketing officer. ?This is just one more thing to add into the mix to help people find the right hotel for them.?
Under the new arrangement, TripAdvisor content will be another filter that people can toggle on or off. The results can also be ordered according to their TripAdvisor ranking, which brings up the review site?s familiar, five-category (Excellent to Terrible) bar charts.
The announcement is among Kayak?s ongoing efforts to augment its meta-search offerings. In October, the site added reviews from Frommer?s and Budget Travel, which can also be toggled on or off based on users? preferences.
?Some people don?t like user reviews,? said Birge. ?We?re giving people the choice depending on what kind of content they want to read.?
Kayak, of course, is not the first website to incorporate TripAdvisor ratings. Spun off from Expedia.com in December, the site's reviews appear on the websites of more than 250 companies, including hotels, airlines and online travel agencies.
But the move can also be seen as the latest skirmish in a battle that pits Kayak and TripAdvisor against Google, which has clearly set its sights on online travel with a series of acquisitions (ITA Software, Zagat) and new products, including Google Flights and Google Hotel Finder.
?There?s still a large percentage of travelers who haven?t heard of Kayak,? said Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting Inc. ?Brand recognition is a challenge that they constantly face.?
Integrating TripAdvisor?s 60 million reviews may be a powerful tool in that regard. Consider a recent search for the EPIC Hotel in Miami. Pre-integration, Kayak had all of 10 reviews; TripAdvisor, 928.
That kind of volume carries a lot of weight, says Ryan Williams, director of client services, travel, for Compete, a ?digital intelligence? company. ?If TripAdvisor can help consumers trust [Kayak?s] content, then why wouldn?t they use it?? he said. ?It?s just one more reason to use Kayak as your search engine.?
Of course, it should come as no surprise that Google is also incorporating reviews into Hotel Finder, although on a much smaller scale. Previously aggregating reviews from across the web ? including those from TripAdvisor until they were pulled last summer ? the site now only includes reviews from users with Google accounts. (There are currently 16 such reviews for the EPIC Hotel.)
?Reviews are also part of what Google is about now so there?ll be a natural competition there,? said Rose.
?It?s a fight over the online travel pie, which is only growing very slowly,? said Williams. ?It might take two or three big, known brands to work together to change the landscape, improve the experience and actually grow the pie.?
Rob Lovitt is a longtime travel writer who still believes the journey is as important as the destination. Follow him at Twitter.
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