Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor, Inc. is an American online travel company that operates a website and mobile app with user-generated content, a comparison shopping website, and offers online hotel reservations as well as bookings for transportation, lodging, travel experiences, and restaurants. It is headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts.
Its flagship brand, Tripadvisor.com, reached 463 million average monthly unique visitors in 2019. The website has versions in 48 markets and 28 languages worldwide. It features approximately 859 million reviews and opinions on approximately 8.6 million establishments—including 1.4 million hotels, inns, bed and breakfasts and specialty lodging, 842,000 rental properties, 5.2 million restaurants, and 1.2 million travel experiences worldwide. The company's other websites include Airfarewatchdog, Bokun.io, Bookingbuddy.com, Cruise Critic, Familyvacationcritic.com, FlipKey.com, Thefork.com, Holidaylettings.co.uk, Holiday Watchdog, Housetrip.com, Jetsetter.com, Niumba.com, Onetime.com, Oyster.com, SeatGuru.com, Smartertravel.com, Tingo.com, Vacationhomerentals.com, and Viator.com.
In 2019, Tripadvisor earned 33% of its revenues from Expedia Group and Booking Holdings and their subsidiaries, primarily for pay-per-click advertising.
History
Tripadvisor was founded by Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka in February 2000. Kaufer said the original idea wasn't a user generated social media site to swap reviews, "We started as a site where we were focused more on those official words from guidebooks or newspapers or magazines. We also had a button in the very beginning that said, 'Visitors add your own review', and boy, did that just take off." Seed money was obtained from Flagship Ventures, the Bollard Group, and private investors.In 2004, the company was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp.
In August 2005, IAC spun off its travel group of businesses under the Expedia, Inc. name.
In April 2009, Tripadvisor launched in China.
In September 2010, SmarterTravel, part of TripAdvisor Media Group, launched SniqueAway, the first members-only site where each travel deal is endorsed by member reviews.
In April 2011, Expedia, then led by Dara Khosrowshahi, announced that it would split into two publicly traded companies by spinning off TripAdvisor. The corporate spin-off was completed in December 2011.
In November 2018, the company added DoorDash to its restaurant listings.
In February 2020, the company changed its name from TripAdvisor to Tripadvisor, using a lowercase "a".
Acquisitions
In May 2007, the company acquired Smarter Travel Media, operator of SmarterTravel.com, BookingBuddy.com, SeatGuru.com, TravelPod.com, and Travel-Library.com.Also in May 2007, the company acquired The Independent Traveler, Inc., publisher of Cruise Critic and IndependentTraveler.com.
In February 2008, the company acquired Holiday Watchdog, user-generated travel site in the U.K.
In April 2008, the company acquired Airfarewatchdog.
In July 2008, the company acquired Virtualtourist, a travel website with reportedly about one million registered members and OneTime.com, a travel comparison site.
In July 2008, the company acquired a majority stake in FlipKey.com, a vacation-rental website.
In October 2009, the company acquired Kuxun.cn, China's second-largest consumer travel site and hotel and flight search engine. Kuxun was later sold to Meituan.
In June 2010, the company acquired holidaylettings.co.uk, the United Kingdom's largest independent vacation rental website.
In July 2011, the company acquired Where I've Been, a Chicago-based Facebook app.
In October 2012, the company acquired Wanderfly, an NYC-based travel inspiration website for an undisclosed sum.
In April 2013, the company acquired Jetsetter, an NYC flash sale site.
In June 2013, the company acquired GateGuru, an NYC-based flight and airport information mobile app for an undisclosed sum.
In October 2013, the company acquired Oyster.com, a hotel review and photography website.
In May 2014, the company acquired Vacation Home Rentals and Tripod.
In May 2014, the company acquired LaFourchette for $140 million.
In August 2014, the company acquired Viator for $200 million.
In October 2014, the company acquired Mytable and Restopolis.
In January 2015, the company announced the acquisition of Iens, a Dutch restaurant review website, and SeatMe, a Dutch table reservation website.
In April 2015, the company acquired Portuguese startup BestTables.
In May 2015, the company acquired Australian startup Dimmi for $25 million.
In August 2016, Tripadvisor acquired New York City startup Citymaps.com, which developed a social mapping site and cross-platform map engine based on OpenStreetMap data.
In October 2016, the company acquired Couverts, a Dutch table reservation website.
In April 2018, the company acquired Icelandic startup Bokun, a provider of software for travel booking.
Controversies
Data breach
In March 2011, Tripadvisor informed its members that it suffered a data breach and an unauthorized party had stolen some of its email list and might use it for spamming. No passwords or other information was stolen.Drip pricing
In July 2012, Tripadvisor was fined $80,000 by the United States Department of Transportation for violating fair trading regulations requiring taxes and fees to be shown for prices quoted for airfares. The rule had come into effect in January of that year.Criticism of reviews
Tripadvisor has been the subject of controversy for allowing unsubstantiated anonymous reviews to be posted about any hotel, bed and breakfast, inn, or restaurant.Approximately 30 hotels have been penalized on the website by the company for suspicious reviews, including a Cornwall hotel that bribed guests to leave positive reviews of the hotel.
Tripadvisor has stated that reviews are subject to a verification process which considers the IP address and email address of the author, and tries to detect any suspicious patterns or obscene or abusive language. The website also allows the community of users to report suspicious content, which is then assessed by TripAdvisor staff.
In September 2011, after receiving a complaint submitted by online investigations company KwikChex, the UK Advertising Standards Authority launched a formal investigation into TripAdvisor's claims to provide trustworthy and honest reviews from travelers. The ASA found that TripAdvisor "should not claim or imply that all its reviews were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted", and as a result of the investigation, TripAdvisor was ordered to remove the slogan "reviews you can trust" from its UK web site. It changed its hotel review section slogan to "reviews from our community". TripAdvisor said the branding change had been planned for some time and that changes began in June 2011, before the ASA investigation. ASA commented that "it was concerned that consumers might be fooled by fraudulent posts since the entries could be made without any form of verification", but recognized that TripAdvisor used "advanced and highly effective fraud systems" in an attempt to identify and remove fake content.
In 2012, an action was brought in a Sheriff Court in Scotland, by Richard Gollin, the owner of a guesthouse in the Outer Hebrides who claimed damages for malicious statements. TripAdvisor asserted that the Scottish courts lacked jurisdiction. The outcome of this case was called a "landmark victory". TripAdvisor conceded that it could be sued in the UK's jurisdictions. The court ruled that TripAdvisor's terms of use constituted a contract, which was actionable/enforceable by the business being reviewed. The case was found to involve issues relating to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Act of 1977, and these issues were referred to a higher court in Stornoway. The plaintiff eventually dropped the case because he could not afford to pursue it.
In May 2013, a fake restaurant was set up by a disgruntled businessman and reportedly had diners looking for the eatery in an alley filled with garbage cans. The fake listing went undetected on TripAdvisor for about two months.
In August 2013, Kenneth Seaton lost a $10 million lawsuit against the company in which he claimed that the ranking for his Grand Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, as "America's dirtiest hotel" was based on unsubstantiated rumors.
In March 2014, TripAdvisor's Chinese site came under scrutiny when a user was found to have reviewed 51 Parisian restaurants in one month, while also reviewing 50 hotels in other countries.
In December 2014, the Italian Antitrust Authority fined TripAdvisor €500,000 for improper commercial practices on the TripAdvisor website. The Italian Authority said TripAdvisor and its Italian arm should stop publishing misleading information about the sources of the reviews. In June 2015, a fake restaurant created by a newspaper rose to the top of the site's rankings in Italy.
In March 2015, Dietmar Doering, a German hotelier based in Sri Lanka accused TripAdvisor of hosting malicious reviews of his resort The Cosy Beach in Marawila. He claimed he was compelled to take legal action for the estimated damages of US$500,000.
In October 2015, an ex-hotel manager at Australian property manager Meriton said guests were offered inducements to change ratings they left on the site. In 2018, Meriton was fined AU$3 million by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for misleading consumers.
In November 2017, it was reported that TripAdvisor had deleted numerous reviews which contained allegations of serious criminal activity at resorts in Playa del Carmen, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. The deleted reviews included those from two women who were raped at the Iberostar Paraiso Maya in separate incidents 2010 and 2015, one of which involved a hotel security guard. The women said they received assurances from hotel staff that they would help out and contact the authorities, but the staff failed to take any follow-up action. The women then posted advisories and warnings on TripAdvisor, but the reviews were deleted. The review of first victim, Kristie Love, was eventually reinstated, but the company claimed the review of the second victim, Jamie Valeri, was "hearsay" and it was not reinstated. The reports also highlighted at least 12 other such incidents at hotels and resorts across Mexico, including one of a 29-year-old man who was raped by a massage therapist at a resort in the same area, where reviewers had attempted to warn people through reviews on the company's site about criminal incidents that the resorts and local authorities had failed to pursue any criminal or legal action for, only to have those reviews either taken down or declined for posting by TripAdvisor.
In November 2017, Oobah Butler, a journalist for Vice Media, who had claimed to post positive reviews for restaurants he never visited in exchange for payment, used fake reviews to boost a nonexistent restaurant named The Shed at Dulwich to the top of TripAdvisor rankings for restaurants in London.
In September 2019, consumer organisation Which? said TripAdvisor was still failing to stop fake reviews. Its survey of nearly 250,000 reviews for the ten top-ranked hotels in ten popular tourist destinations around the world found that one in seven had "blatant hallmarks" of fake positive reviews. TripAdvisor responded: "We are committed to ensuring reviews on TripAdvisor offer useful and accurate information, and we are very aggressive in catching fake reviews and pursuing the fraudsters behind them."