TripAdvisor 2012 Annual Report Download - page 17

that are currently available in 20 languages. Our innovation also extends to content syndication and
review collection partnerships, as we leverage our technology and content for the benefit of other
websites. In addition, we expend significant efforts with respect to manual and electronic fraud
detection in order to maintain the quality and authenticity of user reviews, and have clear posting
guidelines for user content submission.
•Global Reach. We maintain a global presence both through the reach of our global portfolio of 30
websites and through our in-market staffing in more than ten countries. We have TripAdvisor branded
websites in 30 countries and 21 languages at December 31, 2012, including in China under the brand
daodao.com. We have over 120 million review translations, and we are committed to continuing to
improve the in-country user experience and the local content coverage for all of our points-of-sale. As
of December 31, 2012, we had approximately 650 employees based outside of the United States. We
believe that our core TripAdvisor platform and many of our other brands are uniquely positioned to
appeal to travelers globally, in that they strive to provide universally-relevant content and community.
Our Strategy
In expanding our global reach, we leverage significant investments in technology, operations, brand-
building, and advertiser and other partner relationships. For example, we are able to aggregate a large base of
consumer reviews, in a variety of languages, across our global core platform. We expect to continue leveraging
this investment when launching additional points of sale in new countries, introducing new product features and
adding new business model offerings.
•Investment in Technology. We believe that our ability to continue to innovate by providing additional
functionality to our main Internet sites, while at the same time continuing to extend that functionality to
additional platforms such as smartphones and tablets, will enable us to continue providing an industry-
leading user experience. We have a strong culture of speed-to-market with our innovations. By
innovating and releasing updates quickly, we believe that we can continue to grow our site visitors and
over 75 million reviews and opinions, increase revenue and effectively compete with our competitors.
•Social Platform. We intend to continue to expand our social integration and member acquisition efforts
with social media, including Facebook, Twitter and other social sharing platforms. We believe that this
integration will enable us to continue to grow and maintain engagement with our user base and increase
our content. For example, when searching for a hotel on TripAdvisor, users can see which hotels their
Facebook friends and friends-of-friends have visited and reviewed. Users can share their reviews and
ratings with their friends and publish their activity to their timelines. Users can also update their travel
map and rate new experiences on Facebook.
•Metasearch. We have offered a flight metasearch product since 2009 expanding internationally to
19 points of sale in 2012. In 2012, we invested in building a hotel metasearch product for our
smartphone platforms and we currently plan to roll out our hotel metasearch product on our desktop
and tablet platforms during the next three to six months. A metasearch display is an interface that
shows hotel or flight availability and pricing information from multiple sources, without requiring the
user to visit another website. We expect to continue to develop our metasearch capabilities, because we
believe that by showing users real-time pricing and availability wherever possible across our global
points of sale, we can provide a better user experience while delivering highly qualified leads to our
advertising partners.
•Investment in Search Engine Marketing. One of the ways that we look to penetrate new markets is to
leverage our expertise in search engine marketing, or SEM. SEM is a form of Internet marketing that
involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages through the
use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. In certain markets we may bid on
keywords to break even or at a loss in order to drive traffic, build our brand, gain more users to our product,
collect content and scale more quickly. We think SEM is an important channel because it delivers a
significant number of brand impressions and can be a cost-effective method to get people to try our sites.
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