Planning to travel? Tap your 'friends of friends', urges TripAdvisor

If you're planning to book a vacation, where do you head first for some input? Family? Friends? The internet?

Chances are it's the first two before the last, which makes perfect sense -- but this week, TripAdvisor announced new technology that brings travel advice and reviews with a seal of approval from the names you know and trust, combining all three sources for the first time.

The Friend of a Friend feature, launched globally by TripAdvisor April 11, automatically highlights reviews which are written by users' friends on Facebook, assuming they've hooked up the travel review site to their Facebook account.

That means that the first reviews users see of a hotel or restaurant will be written by friends, followed by those written by second-tier contacts, which the site believes will also provide useful advice.

It's a simple idea which could make a huge difference to the quality of advice on the site for users -- a similar rationale was behind the personalized 'social search' results also being rolled out by Google, with the help of its Google+ and +1 sharing services.

With Facebook-connected users already writing one out of every four comments on the travel review site, deepening the links to create 'social travel planning' was a logical next step, TripAdvisor's Emma Shaw told Relaxnews.

"The wisdom of crowds remains invaluable but your friends’ advice is an additional layer of highly personalized, relevant and trusted advice, and we think this will help travelers make even more informed decisions," she explains.

"Travelers with mutual friends have mutual interests and preferences – Friend of a Friend gives insight from similar travelers across the globe who have 'been there done that'."

Those similar travelers, of course, may not be your close friends -- the site notes that while most people have 190 first-degree friends, the circle of 'friends of friends' is vastly larger, perhaps ten times so.

"The world is a big place and, depending on what location or property you’re researching, you may or may not always see reviews from your inner circle," Shaw concludes.

"Friend of a Friend dramatically increases the probability of seeing opinions from a larger network of travelers that know the people you trust."