TripAdvisor has launched the Business Travel Center, a place to “Read business travelers’ reviews, find great hotels and restaurants, and map your business trip.” Business travelers can search information by city–more than 750 cities are featured–to help travelers find hotels, restaurants and more for their business trip. When we searched San Francisco, the resulting page featured the top 20 of 249 hotels that TripAdvisor reviewers deemed would be good for business travel. When TripAdvisor reviewers write a review, they are asked if the trip was for business or leisure and this is how the hotels are picked to be featured on the Business Travel Center pages.
You can see how a particular hotel stacks up for business as well as leisure travelers. For example, the number one hotel for business travel in San Francisco is the Orchard Hotel. The same hotel ranks number five for leisure travelers. It’s interesting to note that this is an independent hotel where guests cannot earn miles/points. The same holds true in New York City–the top four rated business hotels do not offer miles/points. But the fifth does–Wyndham Garden Hotel, Times Square South.
Along with hotel information, you have access to weather information and quick links to business travel advice from “real travelers” such as arriving and departing, getting around, public transportation and more. You can also quickly access a map function that maps such destinations as coffee shops, copy services, rail stations and shipping with a quick click. And you can follow tabs to other information such as flights, restaurants and things to do.
Bottom Line: There’s not much here to differentiate this from the rest of TripAdvisor (the weather information is a nice touch), but the information is geared toward business travelers and is a quick way to access a lot of hard-earned travel advice from those who’ve been there and lived to tell about it.