TripAdvisor the world’s largest travel site, is celebrating its 15-year anniversary. The company was founded in a small office above a pizza shop called Kosta’s in Needham, Massachusetts in 2000, but its first ever traveller review was not posted until February 2001. Ironically, the site was originally designed as a B2B tool, not as a customer review site.
It started to take off when the Popularity Index was launched in November 2002 and grew more rapidly when restaurants and forums were added in 2004. There are now more restaurants (2.4 million) listed on TripAdvisor than hotels (915,000).
Today, the company spans more than 45 countries – in fact the majority of TripAdvisor’s site traffic now comes from outside the U.S. It had more than 2.5 billion unique visitors during 2014 and also recently crossed the 200 million reviews and opinions milestone.
‘MariaAA’ is the longest serving member of the TripAdvisor community, having joined the site in 2002. One of TripAdvisor’s top world contributors is Ron Scott of Australia. He has been a member since November 2007 and travelled nearly 3 million kilometres (2,618,861) around the globe so far. He has made 3,249 contributions (across 518 cities and 46 countries) – including 1528 restaurant reviews, 218 hotel reviews, 938 attraction reviews with 313 first-to-reviews. In seven years this equates to 464 contributions on average each year.
“It’s been an incredible journey so far, and I am just as excited about what our future holds,” said Stephen Kaufer, president and CEO of TripAdvisor. “TripAdvisor has evolved from being the site for hotel reviews to becoming the ‘destination site’ where you go to research and book nearly every aspect of your trip.”
