JAL To Lure Travelers With Hotel Reviews From TripAdvisor

TOKYO (Nikkei)–Japan Airlines Corp. has tied up with TripAdvisor LLC to incorporate user reviews from the U.S. firm’s travel search Web site into the JAL site’s section for hotel reservations.

As reservations for airline tickets are increasingly made online, the carrier seeks to enhance the appeal of its Web site by expanding its features.

For travelers planning overseas trips, JAL’s site offers sightseeing maps of 50 cities around the world showing hotel locations and other information. Reservations can be made directly on the map pages.

Now, user reviews from TripAdvisor have been added for some 1,400 hotels on these maps. When the name of a hotel is clicked, user reviews, including those in Japanese, and a rating on a five-point scale appear at the left side of the computer screen.

When a hotel reservation is made via JAL’s Web site, the airline receives a referral fee. With the new feature on its site, the carrier aims to boost hotel reservations by 30% this fiscal year from a little more than 1.6 billion yen in fiscal 2008.

(The Nikkei Business Daily June 10 edition)