“So, got any vacations scheduled this summer?” It’s that time of year, when the weather is warming up and everyone, from friends to business associates to strangers you meet at cocktail parties, asks what plans you have for the summer. If you don’t have anything nailed down yet, TripAdvisor would like to help. This online travel community has more than 5 million reviews and opinions covering more than 250,000 hotels and attractions. It is owned by Expedia, but offers links to book your travel at a variety of websites, including its parent, Orbitz.com and Hotels.com, as well as some smaller travel sites you may not be aware of. You don’t actually book travel at TripAdvisor.com – you do research on your destination and then link through to other sites to make reservations. TripAdvisor’s weekly email newsletter, TripWatch, has a selection of content from the website and supports key business goals – to link readers to TripAdvisor.com and partner websites. I reviewed 4 issues of TripWatch, delivered between March 27, 2007 and April 17, 2007, to write this review. As with most vacations, there are things in this newsletter I would recommend to friends and colleagues. They include:

• Good use of tools to get the email newsletter delivered to the inbox
• Great use of brand in the from line
• Clear business goals – to drive readers to TripAdvisor for travel information and to partners’ websites for booking

But there are also a few changes I’d suggest, including:

• Developing a revised content strategy to make the newsletter more like a travel journal and less like an ad in the travel section of a newspaper
• Making the newsletter a stronger viral marketing tool by including a “forward this to a friend” call-to-action and a way for recipients of the forwards to subscribe
• Getting more creative with the subject line and featuring different destinations each week

Bottomline: There’s a lot of potential here, but an overload of information combined with a focus that’s too “salesy” is keeping this newsletter from being as successful as it could be.