Hi Patrick - Our goal isn't to charge money to customers who already know about existing brands, but to provide first-hand information ABOUT that brand that customers wouldn't otherwise learn from other sites (including the brand itself).

We've been focused on hotels in this specific example, but the same argument could be applied to any travel destination. If you're planning a trip somewhere, would you only want to get information from the official tourist bureau and the hotels themselves, or would it also be beneficial to see candid reviews, blogs, and photos, and interact directly with other travelers who have been to the same place? I would argue that the value provided by that information is worth a lot more than 2%.

The average traveler researches 2-5 sites before booking. and a large % of them are motivated by a desire to read reviews (http://www.phocuswright.com/library/fyi/427). Clearly there is some value provided there, and if we can provide relevant and unique information that leads to a sale, or profit off the sharing of such information through unobtrusive advertisements, then I don't see any problem with that.

And if we can provide more useful information than our competition (many of those sites listed above have almost no original information at all), then I also see no problem with ranking higher in the search results.

That's not to say we are 100% there yet for every destination, but I believe we do have a ton of valuable information, and our goal is to get to 100%.