Recency of reviews also impacts ranking which favors hotels who ask their customers for TripAdvisor reviews over those that don’t. Hotels with the most reviews get higher rankings which benefit larger and non-seasonal properties. They also highlight that TripAdvisor rankings do not adjust for scale. Critics bemoan TripAdvisor for giving a disproportionately large and powerful voice to masses of anonymous reviewers, which results in the spreading of unfiltered misinformation and some cases of cultural misunderstandings. The company is also facing some criticism from operators. In 2018, TripAdvisor streamlined its user experience to make it more appealing and intuitive for mobile users, but mobile revenue per booking continues to lag behind that of desktop users by 30 percent. The company enjoyed a substantial increase in mobile bookings, but mobile reservations are less lucrative than those made on a desktop. In 2017, TripAdvisor reported a modest 5% growth in total revenue, and their adjusted EBITDA dropped 25% in the hotel segment due to the migration of website users from desktop to mobile devices. The number of experiences on offer has doubled to more than 100,000 in the last two years. Experiences offered range from cooking classes and skip-the-line access to famous attractions to multi-day excursions. In 2016, the company rebranded their attractions listings calling them TripAdvisor Experiences in keeping with trends on Airbnb and. Since 2015, TripAdvisor has purchased over a dozen travel experience companies including FlipKey, The Fork, Cruise Critic and Viator. In 2017, the company’s non-hotel segment (including attractions, vacation rentals and restaurants) grew 24% to $360 million in revenue. In more recent times, TripAdvisor has aggressively built and added non-hotel related content to its platform. In 2017 TripAdvisor reached six out of ten travelers in 12 major markets around the world and influenced 50% of hotel reservations globally. It appears on the first page of organic search results for 99% of unbranded search terms for hotels (hotels + destination). TripAdvisor is the most visited pre-transaction travel site in the world. Today, TripAdvisor claims approximately 400 million monthly website visitors globally and lists 7 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. The company’s original business plan was to drive leads to hotel websites. TripAdvisor launched in 2000 and has since grown to become the world’s most used travel website.

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