The conversation in online travel circles has been dominated this year by new entrants and the age-old battles.
These discussions have mostly been around Airbnb deciding it wants to challenge the online travel agencies and ongoing debates about those same intermediaries and the immense power that they hold over the market.
But TripAdvisor has issued a fairly unsubtle hint this week that it shouldn't be forgotten.
A report that the review giant has conducted with audience measurement service ComScore found that TripAdvisor "reached" six out of ten of travellers in 12 major markets around the world before they made a booking.
The analysis, covering the second and third quarters of 2017, also found that TripAdvisor is the most visited pre-transaction travel site in the world - in other words, it would seemingly hold a fair amount of sway over the potential decision-making process of millions of travelers ahead of them parting ways with their money on transaction sites.
TripAdvisor/ComScore claim the top five pre-transaction sites are:
- TripAdvisor - 70%
- Booking.com - 45%
- Trivago - 28%
- Hotels.com - 23%
- Expedia - 22%
The report also claims that TripAdvisor has "unquestionable influence" over purchasing, with 74% of visitors to TripAdvisor then heading to a hotel website to make a booking.
Similar figures, 67% and 61% for online travel agencies and airline websites respectively, are noted for the share of visitors on TripAdvisor who then go on to make a booking elsewhere.
What else?
The report says that one in every 11 travelers worldwide visited TripAdvisor in July 2017, typically the brand's most popular month.
In actual figures, this equates to around 320 million unique visits a month - triple the volume hitting the site at around the same time in 2014.
Perhaps one of the most interesting findings in the report comes in ComScore's analysis on site visits over a period of time.
For example, a traveler who eventually makes a booking on an OTA will first visit TripAdvisor on average about 30 days after first browsing online.
The average booking day is at around day 89 and the final time they visit TripAdvisor in that cycle is a further 12 days on.
This compares, to hotel website bookers, to 25 days in from the first activity to the booking taking place on day 97 and the last TripAdvisor visit just two days later.
Another interesting element comes with TripAdvisor claiming the vast majority of travel searches start out in a generic way.
The report says: "The study found that travellers don’t often have a clear destination or even a specific hotel, airline or OTA brand from which to purchase their trip in mind when they begin their research, and are increasingly more comfortable beginning their travel research without a brand or destination in mind."
* The full report is here.