Over the long-term, Tripadvisor believes that improving its offerings to deepen consumer engagement on its platform will enable it to more effectively monetize its influence. For example, in Tripadvisor-branded display and platform revenue, Tripadvisor enables travel partners to amplify their brand, generate brand impressions, and potentially drive qualified leads and bookings for their businesses. Historically, Tripadvisor has limited both the type and number of display-based advertising opportunities it makes available to travel partners, particularly on mobile phone, which, in turn, has limited display-based advertising revenue growth. However, Tripadvisor continues to work on initiatives to better leverage its audience, content, data, travel influence and platform breadth to open up new media advertising opportunities through a more modern, high-powered advertising suite spanning native, video and programmatic solutions. Tripadvisor has broadened its solution to a larger set of advertising travel endemic and non-travel endemic advertising partners, including industries such as entertainment, spirits, and finance. On the consumer side, Tripadvisor is focused on making Tripadvisor membership more valuable for consumers. As an example, during 2021, Tripadvisor launched Tripadvisor Plus, an annual subscription-based membership that offers financial incentives, benefits and perks to members who book hotels and experiences on its platform.
As discussed above, Tripadvisor initiated cost reduction measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the majority of which were related to personnel and overhead costs and brand advertising, or television advertising, for this segment. During 2021, Tripadvisor maintained the majority of these cost savings in this segment, however, as noted above, Tripadvisor increased its performance marketing spend during the year. Relative strength in CPC pricing allowed Tripadvisor to increase spend in marketing channels at a profitable ROAS (return on ad spend), while its free traffic, or search engine optimization traffic, has been slower to recover.
These efforts demonstrate Tripadvisor’s continued focus on increasing the quality of customer engagement on its platform, including driving membership growth, increasing personalization, and innovating its mobile app experience. Tripadvisor believes delivering – and improving upon – a great experience for users will encourage more users to use its services more frequently, increase member growth and member engagement, and drive loyalty to Tripadvisor’s brand and services. In turn, Tripadvisor believes this makes its platform more attractive for travel partners, and can result in increased monetization over time for Tripadvisor and its travel partners.
Experiences & Dining Segment
Tripadvisor’s Experiences & Dining offerings contribute to the comprehensive user experience it delivers, which Tripadvisor believes helps to increase awareness of, loyalty to, and engagement with its products, drive more bookings to Experiences & Dining travel partners and generate greater revenue and increased profitability on Tripadvisor’s platform. Given the significant market opportunities in these large categories, Tripadvisor expects to continue to invest in building these offerings to drive consumer engagement, bookings and revenue growth for the long-term. Since the first quarter of 2020, this segment’s revenue has been negatively and materially impacted at varying levels by a significant reduction in consumer demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced consumer willingness to research, purchase, and consume travel activities. This negative impact has also been driven by a wide variety of government-instituted actions and restrictions around the globe aimed at limiting the spread of the virus, all of which have impacted consumer access to experience offerings and restaurants. For example, during the first quarter of 2021, restaurants in most of the European countries in which Tripadvisor’s Dining business operates were ordered to remain closed.
However, during most of 2021, Tripadvisor’s Experiences & Dining segment’s financial results improved significantly, as revenue in this segment increased by 65% during the year ended December 31, 2021, when compared to the same period in 2020, driven by Tripadvisor’s Experiences offering, as a result of the growing travel demand recovery driven by vaccine progress and various government restrictions being gradually lifted. By means of showing a comparison to a pre-COVID-19 timeframe, during the fourth quarter of 2021, Tripadvisor’s Experiences & Dining segment revenue reached approximately 90% of the fourth quarter of 2019 revenue, an increase from 81% of the third quarter of 2019 revenue in the third quarter of 2021, despite the impact of the Delta and Omicron variants. In addition, Tripadvisor’s Experiences & Dining segment revenue during the year ended December 31, 2021, was approximately 67% of 2019’s comparable period, an increase from 40% of 2019’s comparable period during the year ended December 31, 2020.
During the year ended December 31, 2021, Tripadvisor’s Experiences revenue grew over 230%, when compared to the same period in 2020, and reached 64% of 2019’s comparable period revenue, primarily driven by its Viator point of