Viator Outperforms Tripadvisor Experiences in Bookings Growth

25.08.2023 - 14:02 / skift.com / Travel Experiences / Selene Brophy / Matt Goldberg

It’s been eight years since Tripadvisor took over Viator. And while Tripadvisor at one point downplayed Viator as an acquired brand, Tripadvisor could now be changing tack with its current two-brand experiences strategy. 

In 2017, longstanding Viator executives left the company, highlighting the tension caused by Tripadvisor handing over the management and control of its attractions offering to what was then its vacation rentals team. Fast forward to 2023, and Tripadvisor is pushing two experiences brands by actively marketing Viator, while still keeping Tripadvisor Things To Do.

For example, in the fall of 2022, Tripadvisor launched a “Do More with Viator” marketing campaign. Viator spokesperson Laurel Greatrix said the campaign contributed to Viator’s 2022 growth to reach more customers and, ultimately, achieve higher revenue and gross booking values.

As a result, Viator is emerging as a star performer for Tripadvisor. Despite a reported loss of $11 million in the fourth quarter, Viator is the furthest ahead of the anything else in Tripadvisor’s brand portfolio when compared to the same period in 2019, as detailed in Tripadvisor’s financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2022.

Viator delivered record revenue and scale. Its revenue grew by 208 percent compared to 2019 to $127 million in the fourth quarter in 2022 and its gross bookings reached $600 million, some 220 percent of 2019 for the same period . Its overall gross bookings value was approximately $2.7 billion in 2022 or 186 percent of 2019.

But Tripadvisor seems intent on extracting as much benefit from the two-branded approach as opposed to a full throttle-push behind one brand, even though technically, from the backend, it already is. 

Off the back of Viator’s strong fourth quarter performance, supported by this change in approach of a standalone push of Viator, Greatrix admitted there remains room to grow Viator’s brand awareness. 

Tripadvisor CEO Matt Goldberg said the company’s performance was “led by its experiences offering at both Viator and Tripadvisor Core, as well as hotel meta” and that the company would continue to spend on performance marketing to attract experiences on TripAdvisor core, in response to analysts during the company’s recent earnings call.

Goldberg, in the role for less than a year, recognized the challenges handed to him by his predecessor amidst a large, highly fragmented and underpenetrated experiences market, which he said is estimated to “grow to more than $275 billion by 2025.”

“So experiences on Tripadvisor Core is a great opportunity for us. It’s a very different platform, obviously, than Viator, where people are coming to Viator for very specific booking