TripAdvisor 2013 Annual Report Download - page 13

PART I
Item 1. Business
Overview
TripAdvisor is the world’s largest online travel company. Our mission is to help people around the world
plan and have the perfect trip by giving them access to the reviews and opinions of the millions of travelers who
make up our global online community. TripAdvisor aggregates reviews and opinions about destinations,
accommodations (including hotels, B&Bs, specialty lodging and vacation rentals), restaurants and activities
throughout the world. Our platform also enables consumers to book hotels, vacation rentals, airline tickets,
vacation packages, destination services and even cruises.
TripAdvisor was co-founded in February 2000 by Stephen Kaufer, our current President and Chief
Executive Officer. TripAdvisor was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp, or IAC, in April 2004. In August 2005,
IAC spun-off its portfolio of travel brands, including TripAdvisor, into a separate newly-formed Delaware
corporation, called Expedia, Inc., or Expedia. On December 20, 2011, Expedia completed the spin-off of
TripAdvisor into a separate publicly traded Delaware corporation.
2013 Highlights
Following are some business highlights for fiscal 2013:
• We introduced hotel metasearch functionality on our TripAdvisor-branded websites to provide
consumers with real-time online hotel availability and pricing information from multiple sources
without requiring the user to visit another website.
• We launched points of sale in Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and Columbia, bringing our total TripAdvisor-
branded websites to 34, which includes tripadvisor.com in the United States and daodao.com in China.
• We completed six acquisitions during 2013: TinyPost, the developer of a product that enables users to
embed text over photos and turn them into stories; Jetsetter, a members-only private sale site for hotel
bookings; CruiseWise, a cruise research and planning site; Niumba, a Spain-based vacation rental site;
GateGuru, a mobile app with flight and airport information around the world; and Oyster, a hotel
review website featuring expert reviews and photos covering approximately 150 cities.
• We now manage and operate 20 travel media brands in addition to our flagship TripAdvisor brand, all
of which are connected by the common goal of providing comprehensive travel planning resources
across the travel sector.
• Our websites globally reached more than 260 million monthly unique visitors during the year ended
December 31, 2013, according to Google Analytics. At approximately 11% of the world’s monthly
unique visitors in online travel, TripAdvisor remains the largest travel website in the world at
December 31, 2013 according to comScore Media Metrix.
• Cumulative downloads of TripAdvisor’s apps—including TripAdvisor, City Guides, SeatGuru,
Jetsetter and GateGuru—reached 82 million and average monthly unique visitors via smartphone and
tablet devices grew over 170% year-over-year to approximately 87 million for the year ended
December 31, 2013, according to company logs.
• We feature over 125 million reviews and opinions on more than 775,000 hotels and accommodations
and approximately 550,000 vacation rentals—as well as more than 2 million restaurants and 400,000
attractions in 139,000 destinations throughout the world.
• We entered into an agreement with Samsung to pre-install TripAdvisor’s market-leading mobile
application onto the new Samsung GALAXY S4. In addition to pre-installing TripAdvisor’s industry-
leading app, Samsung is using TripAdvisor’s user content to power its Travel Widget, Lock Screen
Slideshow and City Information in Samsung Story Album.
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