In 2016, we launched our Expert Review API to allow anyone to programmatically access professional review data for over 50,000 hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions worldwide.
We’ve been very pleased with adoption of the service, which is now used by over 50 startups as well as by more well-established travel portals. The kinds of uses that we’re seeing are much more extensive than we’d originally anticipated — our white-label API customers include companies working on AI travel search technology and travel agencies using the reviews in-house to improve service to their clients.
We’re gearing up to launch v2 of the API. We’re designing this version to be as backward-compatible as possible; for most users, common API calls will continue to work without any changes necessary. (And in any event we will continue to support v1 of the API until at least the Fall of 2019.) Here’s a preview of three new features in v2.
For the first time, the API will include coverage of award lists from major publications.
Some of the most eagerly anticipated travel content takes the form of lists, like Condé Nast Traveler’s Gold List and The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. The new version of the API will include this data for the first time.
Useful pieces of advice are often included in reviews, like what room to ask for at a hotel, what dishes to order at a restaurant, and the best time of day to visit a particular attraction. Our team has been working to identify this advice; the API will also now provide more structured data for each item.
Currently, each venue on TripExpert is ranked within a particular destination, such as the Bahamas, New York City and Hawaii. This is adequate for most purposes, but not if you’re trying to get a ranked list in a wider or narrower geographic area — like the Caribbean, the Upper East Side, or Kauai. We’re building features that will let you retrieve this data via the API.
We’ll be updating the documentation on our developer site in the coming weeks. Feel free to reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions. If you’re building something new and you think our data may be useful, we’d love to hear from you.
We’re excited to announce the winners of our third annual Experts’ Choice Awards. This year, 24,000 outstanding hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions around the world have earned the award. For the first time this year, we are also announcing destination winners in several categories, including best emerging destination, best budget destination, and best overall destination.
Experts’ Choice is the only award that aggregates the advice of professional travel writers. Our 2018 award winners have been selected on the basis of over 1 million reviews from 85 publications.
The Seychelles, one of 50 TripExpert new destinations
We’ve been busy since our 2017 awards season, adding 50 new destinations on three continents, including Normandy, Cape Cod and the Seychelles. We’ve also incorporated a number of new publications, including Departures, Monocle, and The Telegraph.
It’s encouraging to see the philosophy underlying Experts’ Choice continue to be embraced by travelers and the hospitality industry alike. Meanwhile, problems with user review travel sites (which we’ve written about extensively before) were even more apparent than usual in 2017.
TripAdvisor not only managed to be gamed by a writer who made a non-existent shed the top-rated restaurant in London, but was forced to apologize for deleting reviews by a woman who was sexually assaulted by staff at a resort in Mexico. Why not turn instead to a source that brings together the trusted advice of people whose job it is to review hotels, restaurants, and attractions?
More consumers are looking for critical consensus — think Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic — to make informed decisions and TripExpert delivers.
Help us grow our movement. If you’re an award winner, join the more than 2,000 past winners who have shared their press release or Experts’ Choice badge (read more below). If you’re a traveler, tell your friends about how much more sense it makes to go with the advice of professionals.
Our winning venues cover 124 countries and span a wide range of establishments, from luxury hotels to highly recommended hostels and from Michelin-starred restaurants to food trucks. What they have in common is expert consensus that they’re among the best in their respective categories.
Experts’ Choice is highly selective. Over 400,000 hotels, 1.5 million restaurants, and 300,000 tourist attractions were considered for the award; about 2.5% of hotels, 0.5% of restaurants and 1.5% of tourist attractions were selected.
As in previous years, hotels in Europe were the most critically acclaimed. This year, restaurants in North America performed especially well, picking up over 5,000 of the approximately 8,000 awards.
This year, for the first time, we awarded Experts’ Choice to destinations. From February through April, we announced winners in eleven categories. Follow the links to coverage of each destination below.
Experts’ Choice is awarded to hotels, restaurants, and attractions that both have a TripExpert Score of 70 or more and are in the top 10-20% of comparable venues in the same destination. The TripExpert Score is calculated based on how many of our 85 source publications have recommended the venue and what they have said about it. A number of adjustments are made, for example to account for the fact that newly opened venues may not yet have been widely covered in the press.
Our scoring system is objective and impartial; the TripExpert team makes no decisions about whether particular venues will receive the award.
If your establishment has been awarded, we will notify you via email. We’ve prepared a press release for each winner, which we encourage you to add to your website and share on social media.
You’re also eligible to display our electronic and hard copy “Experts’ Choice” badges and certificates. To get your badge, click “Venue Support” from your venue’s page on TripExpert page. Badges and certificates, including hard copy versions, are delivered to you free of charge.
If there’s anything we can help you with, please contact Chris Blume.
Hipmunk is one of our favorite travel planning tools. We’re pleased to announce that it’s now even better: on its award winning web and mobile apps, you’ll find TripExpert-powered reviews for tens of thousands of hotels.
Hipmunk is the latest company using our Expert Review API, which provides data for reviews from 70+ travel guides, magazines and newspapers.
Clicking the TripExpert logo on Hipmunk hotel results will take you to full coverage.
“TripExpert gives us the fun facts and insider tips that let our users know what it will truly be like to stay at each hotel,” said Steve Vargas, Hipmunk’s Director of Product. “Since they’re written by industry experts, the reviews not only give really interesting details, but they also have a more objective quality than user reviews. This makes them super easy to digest and to trust. ”
To learn more about the partnership, see our press release or read coverage on the Hipmunk blog.
We’re pleased to announce the winners of our second annual Experts’ Choice Awards. 7,000 of the world’s best hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions have been honored with the award, which is based on reviews in top travel media.
Last year, we debuted Experts’ Choice as a new type of accolade that reflects the views of expert reviewers. In the past 12 months, we’ve added hundreds of thousands of new reviews from travel guides, magazines and newspapers. We’ve also added coverage for over 100 new destinations on four continents. TripExpert is now a more comprehensive guide to the best places to stay, the best restaurants to dine at, and the top sights to see.
The reaction to our first round of awards was overwhelming. Both our users and our featured venues were relieved that there is now an alternative to user reviews, which our research shows are subject to abuse and often unreliable.
To be eligible, venues must have a TripExpert Score of at least 70. The score is calculated based on reviews in our 70+ source publications; learn more about how it is calculated. In addition, venues must typically be in the top 10% of similar venues in the relevant destination. (Some adjustments are made to these thresholds in certain cases. For example, in some beach destinations, 100% of the resorts are world class and have received the award.)
Over 1,000 venues now proudly display our “Experts’ Choice” badges on their websites or at their places of business. If you’re a winner, we’d love for you to join them. Click “Venue Support” from your TripExpert page for a selection of embeddable badges and to request free certificates to be delivered to you. We’re also happy to work directly with your PR or social media team. Please contact me if you need any help.
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