Skift Take
While investors and observers are rightfully focused on how TripAdvisor's transition to a hotel booking site will work out, the company has some meaningful hedges in the form of vacation rentals, tours and activities, and restaurants. Collecting monthly and annual fees is a very material part of the overall business and will likely become even more so.
The global restaurant business is getting professionalized and wired-up in terms of its digital acumen and TripAdvisor is making a big move to further monetize its 4.2 million restaurant listings by launching a subscription service with added features for dining establishments.
In so doing, TripAdvisor is taking a shot at what Yelp and Google, among others, are doing in their own efforts to wrangle advertising dollars out of restaurateurs. TripAdvisor already attracts plenty of restaurant advertising, which plays off free listings and 100 million reviews, but its latest foray, as distinguished from Yelp's and Google's, goes beyond a pay-per-click business model and offers restaurants extra services for a monthly or annual fee.
TripAdvisor's new restaurant subscription business, which was soft-launched in the U.S. and Spain in the fall but now goes global, supplements the dining reservation services provided by TripAdvisor's The Fork and the Priceline Group's OpenTable.
At the same time, as Hotelmarketing.com reported 10 days ago, TripAdvisor added a new tier to its fee-based hotel Business Listings, launched in 2010, called TripAdvisor Business Advantage. The new service, with fees that are property-specific and based on volumes and market, is aimed at independent hotels.
Restaurant and Hotel Consumers Have Different Shopping Behaviors
Although there are differences betwe
