TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor, Inc.

File:TripAdvisor.png
Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: TRIP S&P 500 Component
Founded	February 2000
Headquarters	Needham, Massachusetts, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Stephen Kaufer
Key people	Stephen Kaufer, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Industry	Travel services
Products	Hotel and flights booking, Vacation rentals, Restaurant finding, Travel guides
Revenue	$1.246 Billion in 2014
Employees	2,793 people as of Dec 2014 Q4 Report
Website	tripadvisor.com
Native client(s) on	iOS, watchOS, Android, Windows, Windows Phone
nearly 280m monthly UV, 60m members and over 170m reviews

TripAdvisor, Inc. is an American travel website company providing reviews of travel-related content. It also includes interactive travel forums.

TripAdvisor was an early adopter of user-generated content. The website services are free to users, who provide most of the content, and the website is supported by an advertising business model.

Description

File:Tripadvisor ITB2014.jpg

TripAdvisor booth at ITB Berlin 2014

TripAdvisor, headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts. claims to be the largest travel site in the world, with more than 60 million members and over 170 million reviews and opinions of hotels, restaurants, attractions and other travel-related businesses. TripAdvisor Media Group operates 25 travel brands including TripAdvisor, Airfarewatchdog, BookingBuddy, Cruise Critic, Family Vacation Critic, FlipKey, GateGuru, Holiday Lettings, Holiday Watchdog, Independent Traveler, Jetsetter, lafourchette, Niumba, OneTime, SeatGuru, SmarterTravel, Tingo, Travel Library, TravelPod, Viator, and VirtualTourist. TripAdvisor operates websites internationally, in such places as Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China (under the brand 猫途鹰 www.tripadvisor.cn), Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands,Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S.

History

In February 2000, TripAdvisor was founded by Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, and several others. Kaufer says the original idea wasn't a user generated social media site to swap reviews. Rather, "We started as a site where we were focused more on those official words from guidebooks or newspapers or magazines. We also had a button in the very beginning that said, "Visitors add your own review", and boy, did that just take off. Pretty soon the number of average consumer reviews far surpassed the number of 'professional reviews'. That is when the site really turned into this collection of what the normal traveler was saying wherever they were going." Original financing was obtained from Flagship Ventures, the Bollard Group, and private investors.

In 2004, the company was purchased by IAC/InterActiveCorp.

In August 2005, IAC spun off its travel group of businesses under the Expedia, Inc. name.

In April 2009, TripAdvisor launched its official site in China, www.daodao.com. Since then it has indexed more than 20,000 hotels and restaurants information and customer reviews, and made top lists, becoming one of the biggest travel websites as of July 2011.

In September 2010, SmarterTravel, part of TripAdvisor Media Group, launched SniqueAway (now Jetsetter), the first members-only site where each travel deal is endorsed by the people.

In March 2011, TripAdvisor informed all registered TripAdvisor members that an unauthorized third party had stolen some of TripAdvisor's email list and might use it to create spam messages. No passwords or other information was stolen. This happened shortly before many other companies reported similar thefts of the addresses on their email lists.

In April 2011, it was announced that Expedia would split into two publicly traded companies by spinning off the TripAdvisor brand of travel sites. According to Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the move "allows the two businesses to be pure plays and to operate with the proper amount of focus to grow respectively."

According to a July 2011 PhoCusWright survey of 3,641 respondents, solicited at random through a pop-up invitation link on TripAdvisor.com and commissioned by Trip Advisor, “98% of participants found that TripAdvisor’s hotel reviews … accurately reflect the experience.”

In December 2011, TripAdvisor was spun off from Expedia in a public offering.

TripAdvisor states it is the world’s largest travel site, with nearly 280 million unique monthly visitors.

In April 2012, the company launched a connection to Facebook that lets users select reviews from people in their social graph.

In August 2014, a survey found that TripAdvisor was the most widely recognized, used, and trusted travel website.

In October 2014, Trip Advisor released a new feature, "Just for you", offering tailored hotel recommendations based on the user's preferences and search history on the site.

In 2015, Tripadvisor started let users not only rate places but tag them, saying, for example that a place propose brunch, is open on Sunday, offers delivery, takeout, etc.

Acquisitions

In May 2007 TripAdvisor acquired Smarter Travel Media operator of SmarterTravel.com and BookingBuddy.com; SeatGuru.com; TravelPod.com; and Travel-Library.com. Also in May 2007, TripAdvisor acquired The Independent Traveler, Inc., publisher of Cruise Critic.com and IndependentTraveler.com

In February 2008, TripAdvisor acquired Holiday Watchdog, a user-generated travel site in the U.K. In July 2008, TripAdvisor acquired Virtualtourist, a travel website with reportedly over 1 million registered members and OneTime.com, a travel comparison site.

In July 2008, TripAdvisor acquired a majority stake in FlipKey.com, a vacation-rental website. In October 2009, TripAdvisor purchased Kuxun.cn, China’s second-largest consumer travel site and hotel and flight search engine. Kuxun was later sold to Meituan.

In June 2010, TripAdvisor acquired the United Kingdom's largest independent vacation rental website, holidaylettings.co.uk.

In July 2011, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Where I've Been, a Chicago-based Travel Facebook app for an undisclosed sum.

In October 2012, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Wanderfly, an NYC-based travel inspiration website for an undisclosed sum.

In April 2013, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Jetsetter, an NYC flash sale site.

In June 2013, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of GateGuru, an NYC-based flight and airport information mobile app for an undisclosed sum.

In July 2014, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Viator for approximately $200 million.

In January 2015, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Iens, a Dutch restaurant review website and SeatMe, a Dutch website for reserving seats in a restaurant. According to TripAdvisor, this is to stimulate growth in The Netherlands.

In April 2015, TripAdvisor acquired Portuguese startup BestTables.

In May 2015, TripAdvisor acquired Australian startup Dimmi for $25 million.

Controversy and fraudulent reviews

TripAdvisor has been the subject of controversy for allowing unsubstantiated anonymous reviews to be posted about any hotel, B&B, inn, or restaurant.

Approximately 30 hotels have been blacklisted by TripAdvisor for suspicious reviews, including a Cornwall hotel that bribed guests to leave positive reviews of the hotel.

TripAdvisor has stated that reviews are not posted to the website instantly, but are subject to a verification process which considers the IP address and email address of the author, and tries to detect any suspicious patterns or obscene or abusive language. The website also allows the community of users to report suspicious content, which is then assessed by a team of quality assurance specialists, and TripAdvisor alerts the owner or manager of a TripAdvisor-listed establishment whenever a review is posted on their listing.

In September 2011, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched a formal investigation into TripAdvisor after receiving complaints that its claims to provide trustworthy and honest reviews from travelers are false. The ASA found that TripAdvisor "should not claim or imply that all its reviews were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted", and as a result of the investigation, TripAdvisor was ordered to remove the slogan "reviews you can trust" from its UK web site. It changed its hotel review section slogan to 'reviews from our community.'

TripAdvisor stated that the branding change had been planned for some time and that changes began in June 2011, before the ASA investigation. ASA commented that "it was concerned that consumers might be fooled by fraudulent posts since the entries could be made without any form of verification," but recognised that TripAdvisor used "advanced and highly effective fraud systems" in an attempt to identify and remove fake content.

In 2012, an action was brought in a Sheriff Court in Scotland, by a guesthouse owner who claimed damages for malicious statements. TripAdvisor asserted that the Scottish courts lacked jurisdiction. The outcome of this case was called a "landmark victory", as the pursuer (plaintiff) secured two points of law in the UK:

• TripAdvisor conceded that it could be sued in the UK's jurisdictions (having previously claimed to be outside the remit of the Scottish legal system because it is based in Massachusetts);
• TripAdvisor's terms of use constituted a contract, which was actionable/enforceable by the business being reviewed.

The case was found to involve issues relating to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Act, 1977: these issues were referred to a higher court in Stornoway.

In 2012, TripAdvisor was fined $80,000 by the U.S. Department of Transportation for violating new fair trading regulations requiring taxes and fees to be shown for prices quoted for airfares.

In March 2014, TripAdvisor's Chinese site came under scrutiny because a Chinese research firm uncovered that a reviewer had reviewed 51 Parisian restaurants in one month, while also reviewing 50 Hotels in other countries.

In December 2014, the Italian Antitrust Authority fined TripAdvisor €500,000 for improper commercial practices on the TripAdvisor website. The Italian Authority stated that Tripadvisor and its Italian arm should stop publishing misleading information about the sources of the reviews. In June 2015, a fake restaurant created by a newspaper rose to the top of the site's rankings in Italy.

An ex-hotel manager at Meriton says that guests were offered inducements to change ratings they left on the site.

Dietmar Doering, a German hotelier based in Sri Lanka accused TripAdvisor for its malicious reviews of his resort The Cosy Beach in Marawila. He claimed he was compelled to take legal action for the estimated damages of US$ 500, 000.

See also

• Expedia, Inc., TripAdvisor's former parent company

External links

• Official website
• Official UK Site