At TripAdvisor, we believe in the power of travel — and in helping you make the most of every trip. With over 500 million candid traveler reviews, we can help you make the right choice when you shop for hotels, restaurants, and attractions. You'll also find low airfares, free travel guides, worldwide vacation rental listings, popular forums.
Type of business | Public |
---|---|
Traded as | NASDAQ: TRIP S&P 500 Component |
Founded | February 2000; 19 years ago |
Headquarters | Needham, Massachusetts[1], |
Area served | Worldwide |
Owner | Liberty Media (13.7%)[2] |
Founder(s) | Stephen Kaufer[3] |
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 | $1.492 Billion in 2015[4] |
Employees | 3,008 people as of Dec 2015 Q4 Report |
Subsidiaries | TripAdvisor LLC, TripAdvisor Holdings, LLC, etc.[5] |
Website | tripadvisor.com |
Native client(s) on | iOS, watchOS, Android, Windows, Windows Phone |
TripAdvisor, Inc. is an American travel and restaurant website company that shows hotel and restaurant reviews, accommodation bookings and other travel-related content.[6] It also includes interactive travel forums.
Headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts,[1] TripAdvisor is the largest 'social travel website' in the world, with about 315 million reviewers (active and inactive) and about 500 million reviews of hotels, restaurants, attractions and other travel-related businesses.[citation needed] 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 a hotel booking facility and an advertising business model.[7]
Description[edit]
TripAdvisor booth at ITB Berlin 2014
TripAdvisor Media Group operates 25 travel brands including TripAdvisor, Airfarewatchdog,[8][9][10] BookingBuddy, Citymaps, Cruise Critic, Family Vacation Critic, FlipKey, GateGuru,[11] Holiday Lettings, Holiday Watchdog, Independent Traveler, Jetsetter, lafourchette,[12]Niumba, OneTime, SeatGuru, SmarterTravel, Tingo, TravelPod, Tripbod, VacationHomeRentals, Viator,[13] and VirtualTourist.[1] TripAdvisor operates websites internationally.
History[edit]
TripAdvisor was founded by Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka in February 2000.[14] Kaufer has stated that the original idea wasn't a user generated social media site to swap reviews, '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.'[15] Original financing was obtained from Flagship Ventures, the Bollard Group, and private investors.[16]
In 2004, the company was purchased by IAC/InterActiveCorp.[3]
In August 2005, IAC spun off its travel group of businesses under the Expedia, Inc. name.[17]
Headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts
In April 2009, TripAdvisor launched its official site in China. Since then it has indexed about 20,000 hotels and restaurants information and customer reviews, and made top lists, becoming one of the biggest travel websites in China as of July 2011.[18]
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.[clarification needed][19]
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.[20][21]
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'.[22] The spin-off was completed in December 2011 with a public offering.[23]
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.'[24]
In 2012, TripAdvisor was reported to be the world's largest 'social travel website', with about 280 million unique monthly visitors.[25]
In April 2012, the company launched a connection to Facebook that lets users select reviews from people in their social graph.[26]
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.[27] This feature mirrored the 'Tribes' feature launched on competitor site Gogobot in 2013.[28]
In November 2018, the company incorporated a food-ordering and delivery service, DoorDash, into its restaurant listings.[29]
Revenue model[edit]
According to its 2017 annual shareholder report, Trip advisor earns 43% of its revenues through its two most significant advertising partners, Expedia (its former parent company) and Priceline (a subsidiary of Booking Holdings), and their subsidiaries.It derives a substantial portion of its revenue from advertising and redirections. These include revenues from the sale of advertising, mostly through click-based advertising and, to a lesser extent, display-based and subscription-based advertising. The company also has master advertising contracts with its advertising partners.[6]
Its advertisers usually depend on this advertising to generate sales leads, customers, bookings, or revenue. Click-based advertising revenue accounts for the majority of its advertising revenue. Its CPC[clarification needed] pricing for click-based advertising depends, in part, on competition between advertisers. Its advertisers currently focus more on traffic volume rather than per-click profit. Hence they do not reduce the CPC.
Employment statistics[edit]
As of 2017, Trip advisor employed 3,217 part time and full time employees, of whom 51% were located in United States.[6]
Acquisitions[edit]
In May 2007, TripAdvisor acquired Smarter Travel Media operator of SmarterTravel.com and BookingBuddy.com; SeatGuru.com; TravelPod.com; and Travel-Library.com.[30]Also in May 2007, TripAdvisor acquired The Independent Traveler, Inc., publisher of Cruise Critic.com and IndependentTraveler.com[31]
In February 2008, TripAdvisor acquired Holiday Watchdog, user-generated travel site in the U.K.[32]In July 2008, TripAdvisor acquired Virtualtourist, a travel website with reportedly about 1 million registered members and OneTime.com, a travel comparison site.[33]
In July 2008, TripAdvisor acquired a majority stake in FlipKey.com, a vacation-rental website.[34] In October 2009, TripAdvisor purchased Kuxun.cn, China’s second-largest consumer travel site and hotel and flight search engine.[35] Kuxun was later sold to Meituan.[36]
In June 2010, TripAdvisor acquired holidaylettings.co.uk, the United Kingdom's largest independent vacation rental website.[37]
In July 2011, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Where I've Been, a Chicago-based Travel Facebook app for an undisclosed sum.[38]
In October 2012, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Wanderfly, an NYC-based travel inspiration website for an undisclosed sum.[39]
In April 2013, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Jetsetter, an NYC flash sale site.[40]
In June 2013, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of GateGuru, an NYC-based flight and airport information mobile app for an undisclosed sum.[41]
In October 2013, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Oyster.com, an NYC-based hotel review and photography website, for an undisclosed sum.[42]
In May 2014 TripAdvisor acquired Vacation Home Rentals and Tripod.[43]
In May 2014, LaFourchette agreed to be acquired by TripAdvisor, for $140 million in an all cash deal.[44][12][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] In July 2014, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition.[52]
In August 2014, TripAdvisor acquired Viator, Inc. for $200M.[53][54]
In October 2014, TripAdvisor acquired Mytable and Restopolis.[43]
In January 2015, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Iens, a Dutch restaurant review website, and SeatMe, a Dutch website for reserving seats in restaurants. According to TripAdvisor, this was to stimulate growth in The Netherlands.[55][56]
In April 2015, TripAdvisor acquired Portuguese startup BestTables.[57]
In May 2015, TripAdvisor acquired Australian startup Dimmi for $25 million.[58]
In August 2016, TripAdvisor acquired New York City startup Citymaps.com, which developed a social mapping site and cross-platform map engine based on OpenStreetMap data.[59]
In October 2016, TripAdvisor announced its acquisition of Couverts, a Dutch website for reserving seats in restaurants. According to TripAdvisor, this was to stimulate growth in The Netherlands.[60][56]
In April 2018, Tripadvisor acquired Icelandic startup Bokun, a provider of travel businesses with management software to assist with bookings and reselling services.[61]
Controversy and fraudulent reviews[edit]
TripAdvisor has been the subject of controversy for allowing unsubstantiated anonymous reviews to be posted about any hotel, B&B, inn, or restaurant.[62]
Approximately 30 hotels have been blacklisted[vague] by TripAdvisor for suspicious reviews, including a Cornwall hotel that bribed guests to leave positive reviews of the hotel.[63]
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.[64] The website also allows the community of users to report suspicious content, which is then assessed by Tripadvisor staff.[65]
In September 2011, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched a formal investigation into TripAdvisor after receiving a complaint submitted by online investigations company KwikChex that its claims to provide trustworthy and honest reviews from travelers were false.[66] The ASA found that TripAdvisor 'should not claim or imply that all its reviews were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted',[67] and as a result of the investigation, TripAdvisor was ordered to remove the slogan 'reviews you can trust' from its UK web site.[68] 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.[69][70] 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 recognized 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.[71] The outcome of this case was called a 'landmark victory', as the pursuer (plaintiff) secured two points of law in the UK:[72]
- 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);
- The court ruled that 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 of 1977, and these issues were referred to a higher court in Stornoway.[needs update]
In July 2012, TripAdvisor was fined $80,000 by the U.S. Department of Transportation for violating fair trading regulations requiring taxes and fees to be shown for prices quoted for airfares. The rule had come into effect in January of that year.[73]
In May 2013, a fake restaurant was set up by a disgruntled businessman and reportedly had diners looking for the eatery in an alley filled with garbage cans. The fake listing went undetected on TripAdvisor for about two months.[74] In March 2014, TripAdvisor's Chinese site came under scrutiny when a user was found to have reviewed 51 Parisian restaurants in one month, while also reviewing 50 Hotels in other countries.[75]
In December 2014, the Italian Antitrust Authority fined TripAdvisor €500,000 for improper commercial practices on the TripAdvisor website.[76][77][78] 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.[79]
In 2015, an ex-hotel manager at Meriton said that guests were offered inducements to change ratings they left on the site.[80]
Dietmar Doering, a German hotelier based in Sri Lanka accused TripAdvisor of hosting 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.[81]
In November 2017, TripAdvisor was the subject of reports that it had deleted numerous reviews that contained allegations of serious criminal activity at resorts in Playa del Carmen, a popular tourist resort in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.[82][83] The reports said that the company deleted reviews from two women who were raped at the Iberostar Paraiso Maya in separate incidents 2010 and 2015, one of which involved a hotel security guard. The women said they received assurances from hotel staff that they would help out and contact the authorities, but the staff failed to take any follow-up action. The women then posted advisories and warnings on TripAdvisor, which deleted their reviews. The first victim, Kristie Love, had her review eventually put back up on TripAdvisor's site successfully, while in the case of the second victim, Jamie Valeri, the company refused to budge after citing her report as 'hearsay'. The reports also highlighted at least a dozen other such incidents at hotels and resorts across Mexico, including one of a 29-year-old man who was raped by a massage therapist at a resort in the same area, where reviewers had attempted to warn people through reviews on the company's site about criminal incidents that the resorts and local authorities had failed to pursue any criminal or legal action for, only to have those reviews either taken down or declined for posting by TripAdvisor.[citation needed]
In November 2017, Oobah Butler, a journalist for Vice Media, used fake reviews to boost a nonexistent restaurant named The Shed at Dulwich to the top of Tripadvisor rankings for restaurants in London.[84][85][86] When questioned about its fraud-prevention systems, TripAdvisor responded that this type of fraud was not generally seen, because unlike artificially good reviews for a real restaurant, creating good reviews for a non-existent restaurant is not profitable.
Awards[edit]
In 2019, TripAdvisor was named America's Best Midsize Employer by Forbes.[87]
See also[edit]
- Expedia, Inc., TripAdvisor's former parent company
- Yelp, a competing consumer review site based in the United States
- dianping.com, a competing consumer review site based in China
References[edit]
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- ^'Fact sheet'. TripAdvisor LLC. Retrieved 2009-12-01.
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- ^'TripAdvisor Buys Flight Information App Provider GateGuru'. The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ ab'Restaurant Reservation Service LaFourchette Gobbled Up By TripAdvisor For ~$140M'.
- ^Chowdhry, Amit. 'Travel Site TripAdvisor To Acquire Viator For Approximately $200M'.
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- ^'A weak Wall Street welcome for Newton-based TripAdvisor - Business'. The Boston Globe. December 22, 2011.
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- ^'TripAdvisor is now the world's largest social travel website'. Traveltradejournal.com. 2012-03-17. Archived from the original on 2013-01-20. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
- ^'TripAdvisor unveils next phase of Facebook tie-in, friends of friends included in reviews'. Tnooz. 2012-04-11. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
- ^Sawers, Paul (October 27, 2014). 'TripAdvisor introduces 'Just for You,' hotel recommendations based on search history and feedback]'. TheNextWeb.
- ^'Gogobot goes niche, offering users contextual search aligned to specific interests called Tribes'. Tnooz. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
- ^'DoorDash food deliveries are now available through TripAdvisor'. 2018-11-28.VentureBeat
- ^'TripAdvisor acquires five travel communities'. HotelMarketing.com. 2007-05-09. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
- ^'TripAdvisor Acquires Cruise Critic, Leading Cruise Community'. PR Wire. 2007-05-23. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
- ^'TripAdvisor Acquires Holiday Watchdog'. Reuters. 2008-02-14. Archived from the original on 2008-11-02. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
- ^'TripAdvisor Acquires VirtualTourist and OneTime'. TripAdvisor LLC. 2008-07-01. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
- ^'TripAdvisor Takes FlipKey Majority Stake'. Xconomy. 2008-08-21. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
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- ^'TripAdvisor sells Kuxun brand and revises China strategy'. 2015-08-19. Retrieved 2015-08-19.
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- ^Trefis (29 May 2014). 'TripAdvisor Enters Online Restaurant Reservation Space With Acquisition Of LaFourchette'.
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- ^Dodson, Sean (2007-07-21). 'Best of the net: Tripadvisor - the great divide'. London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
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- ^Oliver Smith (13 Sep 2011). 'TripAdvisor removes 'reviews you can trust' slogan from website'. London: The Telegraph. Retrieved 21 April 2012.
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External links[edit]
- Business data for TripAdvisor:
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TripAdvisor&oldid=897837598'
The travel website TripAdvisor has apologized to a Texas woman for repeatedly deleting her review of a Mexican resort that detailed how she had been raped there by a security guard.
TripAdvisor issued the apology to the woman, Kristie Love, 35, after The Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee published an investigation on Wednesday about her 2010 episode and accounts by other travelers who said the website also removed their warnings about assaults and rapes at hotels.
The Journal Sentinel found that two other women reported that they had been sexually assaulted at the same Mexican resort in recent years.
“We are horrified that this victim experienced this assault on her vacation in Mexico, and other travelers should be aware of this incident,” TripAdvisor said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.
It said that it had restored Ms. Love’s original comment about what happened to her at the hotel, the Iberostar Paraiso near Playa del Carmen and Cancún in Mexico, and emphasized that it valued posts that warned of assaults, robberies and thefts. Her comment was restored in its original chronological position, now buried behind thousands of pages of other posts.
The company said her post was deleted in 2010 because its previous comment guidelines required that “all language needed to be G-rated.” Since that policy changed “a few years ago,” reviews mentioning rapes and assaults have remained on the site, the company said.
“We believe any firsthand experience should be posted to our site as a means to communicate to other consumers looking for information on where they should travel,” TripAdvisor said.
Iberostar Hotels and Resorts, which is based in Spain and also has hotels in the United States and Europe, said it takes all allegations by guests seriously. The company said workers at the Iberostar Paraiso told Ms. Love to file a report with the police but she refused.
“Just as it would in the United States, the failure to have an official complaint on file with the authorities hampers the ability to investigate a claim,” the company said in a statement.
Ms. Love, who could not be reached for comment on Thursday evening, told The Journal Sentinel that the hotel staff members refused to help her after she reported the rape to them. After she returned to Dallas, the hotel told her it had no report of her episode, stopped returning her phone calls and threatened to sue her, she said.
A few weeks after the attack, she returned to Mexico and filed a police report but the hotel would not cooperate with the authorities, she told The Journal Sentinel.
TripAdvisor wields significant influence in the travel industry, and its reviews for hotels and restaurants typically rank near the top in online search listings. Because of its power and popularity, businesses covet positive reviews from travelers and fret about negative comments.
In its statement, TripAdvisor said that since its founding in 2000, it had enforced a strict separation between its reviews and commerce initiatives. Its business listings allow travelers to read reviews and book reservations on the same page.
But the investigation by The Journal Sentinel found other instances in which negative reviews, including comments that warned about assaults and deaths, had been deleted without explanation.
It said its reporting began in July after the death of a 20-year-old Wisconsin college student at a resort in Mexico who was found unconscious after drinking what her family believed was contaminated alcohol.
TripAdvisor said it was also introducing a notification “badge” on its business listings to warn travelers if there had been “health and safety or discrimination issues” reported at the business.