LONDON, April 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Eleven years ago, in February 2000, Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Kaufer started TripAdvisor(R) with the ambition of creating a site to help travellers plan and have the perfect trip, with reviews written by and for real travellers. TripAdvisor, today the world’s largest travel website*, now has 45 million reviews and opinions, with 23 new contributions posted every minute. Five million reviews and opinions have been added since October 2010.
To coincide with the growth in content, TripAdvisor has expanded its global reach. Since the beginning of 2010, sites have launched in Argentina, Greece, Indonesia, Russia, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Norway, Poland, Taiwan and-most recently-Malaysia. TripAdvisor now operates in 29 countries and is available in 20 languages.
“TripAdvisor continues to experience remarkable growth because travellers the world over find exactly what they’re looking for on the site: a wealth of travel-planning tools and the reviews and opinions of millions of other travellers, including their own friends,” said Kaufer. “Since our launch over a decade ago, we have expanded not only our travel-planning features to include Flights, Vacation Rentals, Attractions, and so on, but we have also expanded our global reach. We’re now in nearly 30 countries.”
Milestones in the history of TripAdvisor:
– November 2000: http://www.tripadvisor.com goes live
– March 2002: The site is profitable
– April 2004: Sold to IAC
– August 2005: Part of Expedia, Inc.
– January 2005: The first hurdle of a million reviews and opinions is achieved.
– April 2008: 15 million reviews and opinions
– July 2009: 25 million reviews and opinions
– May 2010: 35 million reviews and opinions
– August 2010: TripAdvisor becomes the first travel site to have more than 40 million monthly users* to become the world’s largest travel site.
– October 2010: 40 million reviews and opinions
– 2010: TripAdvisor launches 10 new sites around the world
– March 2011: 45 million reviews and opinions covering:
1) 85,000+ destinations
2) 474,000+ hotels
3) 100,000+ vacation rentals
4) 135,000+ attractions
5) 675,000+ restaurants
6) With 6,000,000+ candid traveller photos
