TripAdvisor 2014 Annual Report Download - page 42

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Key Growth Areas
We continue to invest in areas of potential growth, including our content and community, product innovation, and international
expansion.
Content & Community. TripAdvisor is an online community in which travelers share their experiences with the rest of the
community. Establishing and reinforcing that sense of community is a key competitive advantage for TripAdvisor and is a component
of our long-term strategic growth plan. As a result, we continue to look for ways to make it easier for users and enjoy a more
personalized and social travel planning experience when planning their perfect trip on TripAdvisor and to share their experiences
(including by leveraging social features across devices and platforms).
Mobile. Improving our products and engaging our community on devices other than desktop computers, in particular mobile
phones, are key priorities that we believe are critical to maintaining and growing our user base over the long term. As of December 31,
2014, our mobile apps reached nearly 175 million downloads and average monthly unique visitors via smartphone and tablet devices
grew over 60% year-over-year from 87 million to 140 million, according to company log files. We anticipate that the rate of growth in
mobile visitors will continue to exceed the growth rate of our overall unique monthly visitors, and that an increasing proportion of
users will use mobile devices to access the full range of services available on our sites. We expect to continue to commit resources to
improve the features, functionality and commercialization of our mobile websites and applications.
Business Listings. Our Business Listings product enable hotel and accommodation owners to buy placement for pertinent
information on TripAdvisor, bringing them closer to potential customers and thereby increasing awareness, engagement, and
potentially, direct bookings. In the year ended December 31, 2014, we grew our Business Listings customer base 18% to 81,000
subscribers. We continue to expand our sales force and improve features to grow our subscriber base.
Vacation Rentals. In the year ended December 31, 2014, we grew our Vacation Rental property inventory 19% to more than
650,000 properties, driven by strong listings growth in our free-to-list model. We offer individual property owners and property
managers the ability to list using a free-to-list, commission-based structure or a subscription-based fee option and we believe our
highly-engaged and motivated user community creates a competitive advantage for us in this market.
Restaurants & Attractions. More than half of our users are not hotel shoppers as they visit TripAdvisor without navigating to
pages that contain a listing of hotels in a city or a specific hotel’s page. TripAdvisor has information and user-generated content on 2.4
million restaurants, and more than 500,000 tours and attractions in 147,000 destinations throughout the world. We believe
TripAdvisor has a unique opportunity to monetize its community of these non-hotel shoppers looking for places to eat and things to do.
With the acquisitions of Lafourchette for online restaurant reservations and Viator for online bookable tours and attractions, we are
attempting to match more users with more businesses on mobile and desktop.
Current Trends Affecting Our Business
There are a number of trends that affect our business. Following are examples of some of the current trends affecting our
business:
Increasing Competition. The travel review industry and, more generally, the business of collecting and aggregating travel-
related resources and information, continue to be increasingly competitive. In recent years, an increasing number of companies, such
as search companies Google, Inc. and Baidu.com, Inc. and large OTAs, have begun to collect and aggregate travel information and
resources. We plan to continue to invest in order to remain the leading source of travel reviews as well as continue to enhance our user
experience. In addition, we face strong competition in our Other segment, including vacation rentals, restaurants and attractions.
Refer to our discussion above in “—Competition” in Item 1 “Business” section for additional information on our competition.
Increasing Use of Internet and Social Media to Access Travel Information. Commerce, information and advertising continue to
migrate to the Internet and away from traditional media outlets. We believe that this trend will continue to create strategic growth
opportunities, allowing us to attract new consumers and develop unique and effective advertising solutions. Consumers are
increasingly using online social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, as a means to communicate and exchange information,
including travel information and opinions. Over the years, we have made significant progress using social networking to leverage the
expanding use of these channels and enhance traffic diversification and user engagement. We will continue to adapt our user
experience in response to a changing Internet environment and usage trends.
Increasing Use of Devices Other than Desktop Computers. Users are increasingly using devices other than desktop computers,
including mobile phones, smartphones and handheld computers such as notebooks and tablets, to access the Internet. To address these
growing user demands, we continue to extend our platform to develop mobile phone and tablet applications to deliver travel
information and resources. Although the substantial majority of our mobile phone users also access and engage with our websites on