TripAdvisor 2013 Annual Report Download - page 3

April 2014
Dear Shareholders:
In 2013, we continued to strengthen our leadership position in travel in pursuit of our company mission: to help
travelers around the world plan and have the perfect trip.
Helping us achieve this mission were the loyal members of our community, who contributed a remarkable
50 million reviews and opinions to the site during the year. We now have more than 150 million traveler reviews
and opinions on more than 4 million places to stay, eat, and visit throughout the world. Our rich and helpful
content attracts a massive audience every month; we had more than two billion visitors to TripAdvisor sites
during 2013 and more than a quarter of a billion average monthly visitors during the third quarter alone.
While we are pleased with our tremendous growth in our content and our travel community, these were just two
of many achievements in 2013 as we focused on improving the TripAdvisor experience for users and advertising
partners alike.
Reducing Friction Led to Big Wins in 2013
As previewed in last year’s shareholder letter, we introduced “metasearch” on our hotel pages, a feature that
allows hotel shoppers to easily compare prices and availability without opening pop-up browser windows.
Today, users can read reviews, view candid photos, and compare prices from hundreds of travel partners – and
they can do all of this within the TripAdvisor experience on any device. Transitioning to metasearch may sound
like a small change, but in fact this was the most transformative usability improvement in our company’s history.
And while the financial impact proved to be choppier than we had originally expected, users clearly prefer this
improved hotel shopping experience. In turn, this is driving even higher-quality leads to our advertising partners
in our core click-based business.
The metasearch initiative was just one example of our dedication to removing friction throughout the planning,
booking, and sharing process. In our fast-growing mobile platform, we redesigned our tablet and smartphone
apps with larger and more immersive photos, making it easier for travelers to find the hotel, restaurant, or
attraction they are looking for. On the phone, we introduced new native apps for Android and iPhone that are
delivering fast performance through better product design. We also added Facebook friend content to mobile web
and native app in order to drive a more engaging and personalized trip-planning experience. Users are loving
these enhancements as evidenced by the continued strong adoption of our top-ranked mobile products: tablet and
smartphone’s share of total traffic nearly doubled to 40%, and app downloads grew nearly 150% to 82 million.
Mobile product innovation and growth remain a top priority.
Reducing friction to drive growth was a theme throughout our business. For example:
• Our Display business was a star performer in 2013, driven by TripAdvisor’s increasing global traffic
and brand, strong sales execution, and our Delayed Ad Call innovation. An industry first, Delayed Ad
Call ensures an advertiser is charged only when its display ad comes into a user’s view.
• We shifted our Vacation Rentals business to a Free-to-List model reduced friction for more property
owners to work with TripAdvisor. By removing advertising partners’ upfront marketing costs, we
improved listing quantity and, more importantly, listing quality for our users.
• We introduced TripConnect, a platform that opens up a wonderfully large customer segment for our
click-based ad product. Over the coming years, we aim to deepen relationships with hundreds of
thousands of independent hotels, inns and B&Bs, enabling them to bid for our high-quality hotel
shopper leads.