TripAdvisor 2014 Annual Report Download - page 4

restaurant platform, The Fork, which now operates in 11 countries, has a network of more than 20,000
restaurant partners and has more than six million users per month.
• Vacation Rentals: Users can also book Vacation Rentals on TripAdvisor, and we continued to scale and
hone our transaction capabilities in 2014. We drove strong growth across all of our key metrics,
including inventory, traveler inquiries, bookings, and revenue. We ended the year with more than
650,000 vacation rental listings, driven by our free-to-list business. In 2015, we expect to see a
continued shift towards transactions, and we are focused on listings growth, owner engagement, user
awareness, and product enhancements to drive higher customer satisfaction and more transactions on
our platform.
The business of being a global travel leader
Our business continues to show healthy growth and our 2014 financial performance remained strong. Total
revenue grew 32% for the year, to more than $1.2 billion. Adjusted EBITDA grew 23% to $468 million.
In our 10-K filing, you will notice that we introduced two reportable segments – Hotel and Other. This additional
information gives more insight into how we are leveraging our core Hotel business to make investments in
attractions, restaurants and vacation rentals, the businesses that constitute our Other segment. Last year, our
Hotel segment revenue grew 26% with very solid 42% Adjusted EBITDA margins. Other segment revenue grew
141%, driven primarily by continued strong growth in vacation rentals as well as by our LaFourchette and Viator
acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the Other segment was negative 4% as we absorbed these
acquisitions and began to aggressively invest in global growth. We are prioritizing revenue growth over Adjusted
EBITDA dollar growth for the time being and we believe Adjusted EBITDA margins could improve as these
businesses achieve greater global scale.
At $1.3 trillion in bookings, the global travel market is large, lucrative, and increasingly competitive. Our
investment philosophy is to prioritize user experience, partner satisfaction, top line growth, market share gains,
and EBITDA dollar growth and reinvest profit into promising growth areas. We will continue to make the
necessary investments and decisions to enhance our long-term growth prospects, grow our community and drive
more benefit to our users and our partners, even if it is at the expense of near-term profitability. As I have said
before, we are in this for the long term.
15 years and counting
For a while now, I have had two signs taped on my office door: “Speed Wins” and “If it is worth doing, it is
worth measuring.” I recently added a third quote – attributed by some to Charles Darwin – that reads: “It is not
the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives; it is the one that is the most
adaptable to change.”
This past February marked TripAdvisor’s 15th anniversary, and as I reflect on what has been most important to
our business over that time, it boils down to our ability to adapt. We test, we fail, we learn, we adapt and we keep
moving forward…quickly. I am very grateful to work with an outstanding team who continuously delivers strong
business results and moves with speed and focus to find new ways to make TripAdvisor even more essential to
travelers around the world.