INTRODUCTION
In the month of Feb year 2000, when Stephen Kaufer founder of the Trip Advisor established TA resulted as a frustration. The frustration was about the unbiased information regarding the travelling. The information about travelling was limited and in depth information was given to the customer by the hotels in which those customers wanted to stay while travelling or on vacations.
This gave the idea about developing the website that would provide insightful information about travelling and about the vacations. The information about the hotel rental charges was also provided on the web portal of Trip Advisor.
Trip Advisor, searched the online travel agencies and offer them the text links on the TA’s site. The text links were basically the ads, and these ads generating profit on pre click basis and during the fiscal year 2000 Trip Advisor become profitable. In the fiscal year 2004, Stephen Kaufer sold the site to InterActive Corporations in an all-cash deal amounted about $ 210 million.
After spin out of the Trip Advisor to InterActive Corporation, it enjoys the rapid growth and its market share was increased and reached to one million reviews. During this rapid growth Stephen Kaufer was part of the company as a president and CEO of the Company. TA becomes the world’s largest travel site with the operation under 24 countries, providing services in 16 languages. It has 455,000 hotels, 564,000 restaurants in more than 71 destinations around the world. It reaches over 40 million reviews, opinion polls and it was gaining 21 contributions per minute in the fiscal year 2010.
In the year 2009, it earned revenues around $352 millionwith the operating income of $196 million. Its unique customer base increased to 35 million customers per month that was more than its indirect competitors such as Travelcity.com, orbitz.com and Pricline.com. The unique customer base was above than three of these had customers cumulatively and its customer base was also higher than its key competitors such as IgoUgo of Travelcity that has 1.1 million unique visitors and Yahoo Travel with the unique customers around 21 million.
The culture of the company was entrepreneurial and managers were free to make a decision regarding the new product launch. This culture of the TA creates the value addition in terms of providing the services to its customers and these value added services were generating profit for the Trip Advisor.
CHALLENGES
Trip Advisor was facing the challenge after entering into the three new markets and these markets were; Rental market, Flight service market and China market. These three markets were very competitive that required high resources to gain competitiveness.
v Customers of Rental market were hesitant rent house on vacation.
v Flight services market was highly competitive.
v China market required new products that suit the market as it was different from the US market.
EVALUATION
The analysis started with the clear organization structure in which Kaufer, Stephen L is the President and CEO of the Company. Under the CEO, the president of the Trip Advisor business comes, Vice president of TAMG, and General Manager of Virtual Tourist comes. Further, the organization has the VPs, GMs, CMOs, Directors, MDs and SVPs of different departments.
The below chart shows the Organizational Structure of Trip Advisor Media Networks:
Further, analysis is performed on the basis of situational analysis in which it comprises of 5 C’s of marketing. This analysis is performed on the basis of environment that Trip Advisor have and it is the scan of the environment. This scan is performed to make a marketing decision based on the internal analysis, micro environmental analysis and macro environmental analysis. Below are the 5 C’s elements such as:
v Company
v Collaborator
v Customers
v Competitors
v Context
Company
In the company, it discusses the product line of the Trip Advisor and these product lines are rental vacation and flights. Furthermore, it includes the Technological aspect of the Trip Advisor and the culture of the company as well. Product line, culture and technological aspect are further analyzed below.
Product Line:
The product line of Trip Advisor includes Rental Vacation and Flight Vacation. In Rental Vacation, Trip Advisor realized the potential and purchased the large portion of stake in the Flipkey.com that was US firm. The Flikey.com had the50,000homes listed for the vacation purpose in the 50 states of the US.
In the month of June 2010, acquisition of Holiday Letting was made that wasU.K based web site for vacation homes. Through this acquisition.................
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By 2010, it was TripAdvisor largest website in the world, operating in 24 countries and 16 languages, classifieds 455,000 hotels, attractions and 564,000 92,000 restaurants in more than 71,000 destinations worldwide. He had more than 40 million reviews from 35 million unique monthly visitors, who contribute 21 new reviews every minute. Known for its reviews, TA expanded in flight, rental and international markets, such as China. Each of these ways of expanding a unique opportunity, as well as new challenges. In August 2010, Stephen Kaufer, CEO, discusses how the priority of its growth plans for the company. "Hide
by Sunil Gupta, Kerry Herman Source: Harvard Business School 19 pages. Publication Date: January 24, 2011. Prod. #: 511004-PDF-ENG
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