Trip Advisor is a big player for most hotels, resorts and vacation rentals. As we all know, most vacationers check out Trip Advisor before making that reservation, that’s why they are a must in your marketing strategy.

So what does the new change have to do with your vacation destination?

Plenty! Many hotels, resorts and vacation rentals choose to advertise on Trip Advisor as they want to be where their vacationers are. As with all of your marketing efforts you want to track its performance, right? Depending on your site, you may find it difficult to track with their latest improvement.

Trip Advisor’s site is now a secure site – HTTPS. We all love secure sites;

after all , don’t you look for that “s” whenever you put in your credit card to buy something?

Not only does that “s” mean it’s secure but it also means that Google likes you more! But that will have to be another blog post.

If your site does not have a secure certificate you might not be able to fully track your Trip Advisor efforts. Your Google Analytics won’t be able to label the Trip Advisor referral traffic, because you are not a secure site and they are.

Is there anything you can do, if you don’t want to invest the extra $50 for a secure certificate? Sure can, it’s just a little more work. You can create custom URLs by using either a program like HubSpot or a free tool like bit.ly. Like I said, it’s a little extra work, but one of the two options should be done so that you can fully see your results.