TripAdvisor - what did they buy and when

Here at BOOT central we are trying to keep track of the acquisitions and subsidiaries of Expedia’s Tripadvisor. In earlier posts on this we tracked simply by way of a list of acquisitions in reverse date order. With what looks like two deals a year to monitor I have decided to expand the list with some more details. Here is an extensive list of all of the acquisitions made by Tripadvisor since joining the Expedia family.

Company	Sector	Date of Acquisition	Description
HolidayLettings	Holiday rentals	24-Jun-10	UK based holiday rental company (is not HolidayRentals owned by HomeAway)
Kuxun	Meta-search	30-Oct-09	China based meta-search. Kuxun means Cool Information or Smart Information
Flipkey	Holiday rentals	July 15 2009	Boston based holiday rental company
OneTime.com	Deal Search	1-Jul-08	At time of acquisition claimed 5 mm uniques and 30mm page views. One estimate puts deal at $85mm. Onetime do not like being called a metasearch company
Virtual Tourist	Social network	(same deal / company)
Airfarewatchdog.com	Deal Search	2-Apr-08	Site that monitors airline deals especially in low cost carrier sector
HolidayWatchdog	Review Site	1-Feb-08	Hotel and holiday reviews with some deal searching – UK based. Travolution rumour that price GBP9-10mm
Cruisecritic.com	Review Site	25-May-07	Cruse ship reviews and deal search
IndependentTraveller.com	Destination Content	(same deal / company)	Destinations content and information. Includes brand Family Vacation Critic
smartertravel.com	Destination Content	9-May-07	Destinations content and information
Travel-Library.com	Destination Content	(one deal buying Smarter Travel Media)	Also includes brand Frequent Flyer.com
bookingbuddy.com	Meta-search		Booking search
TravelPod.com	Blog Platform Social Network		Platform for travel reviews and blogs as well as networking
SeatGuru.com	Review Site		Reviews individual seats on aircraft to help with picking seat assignments
Everytrail.com	Trip planning	3-Feb-11	Trip planning service focused on mobile platforms

Have I missed any? Official Expedia Inc listing is here. Yes – Expedia owns Tripadvisor (you wont believe how much traffic I get for the question “who owns Tripadvisor”).

VirtualTourist and OneTime cost Expedia $85mm according to Venture Beat

Eric Eldon over at the Venture Beat is reporting from an interview with VirtualTourist and OneTime founder J.R.Johnson in his post "No free lunch: The story behind VirtualTourist’s big exit, and Lunch.com".

For those keeping a track of the large number companies bought by TripAdvisor recently, VirtualTourist and OneTime were acquisitions nine and ten in year of frenetic activity by the Expedia owned Tripadvisor (yes...Expedia owns TripAdvisor:)).

Not sure how he did it (and he does not credit Johnson with leaking it) but Eldon has discovered that Expedia/TripAdvisor paid $85mm for the two companies. More back story to the transaction over at the full VentureBeat post.

Hat tip to HotelMarketing where I first saw the story.

Virtual Tourist and OneTime.com join the TripAdvisor Media Network

I have been off the grid so am late in commenting on TripAdvisor's acquisition of social network Virtual Tourist and meta-search company OneTime.com (deal press release here). alarm:clock is crediting the nine year old Virtual Tourist with 5 million uniques and 30 million page views a month. Hotelmarketing.com reported in April that Virtual Tourist had passed the million member mark. The release says that VirtualTourist General Manager Giampiero Ambrosi and OneTime General Manager Dena Yahy will stay with the company but no word on what will happen witth Virtual Tourist founders J.R. Johnson and Tilman Reissfelder.

I have been saying for a while now that TripAdvisor is an advertising network. They are already calling themselves the TripAdvisor Media Network (see the bottom of this press release as an example).

The combined network is carrying some 32 million unique users per month. To put this in perspective I understand that ValueClick Media is the second biggest of the independent advertising networks (here is a list of the top ten from Dec 07). By independent I mean one not owned by a large publisher such as Advertising.com (AOL), BlueLithium (Yahoo!) and aQuantive (Microsoft). ValueClick claim 137mm uniques it their ad network. 32 Million for TripAdvisor is still well short of the ValueClick mark but still more that enough to be a top network. I predict that very soon TripAdvisor will start selling ads for sites they do not own.

I have been keeping a running list of the TripAdvisor acquisitions. Here it is

• OneTime.com;
• Virtual Tourist;
  
• Airfarewatchdog.com;
  
• HolidayWatchdog;
  
• smartertravel.com;
• bookingbuddy.com;
• TravelPod.com;
• Travel-Library.com;
• SeatGuru.com; and
• Cruisecritic.com.

All of which is owned by TripAdvisor's parent Expedia (You would be amazed how much Google traffic I get based on the search "who owns TripAdvisor")

Guillaume over at hotel-blogs has generated a nice graphic to capture them all.

Update - report that Expedia/TripAdvisor paid $85mm for VirtualTourist and OneTime.