Advertising through metasearches like TripAdvisor is becoming less popular

Online travel agencies marketing through metasearch engines like TripAdvisor are losing interesting in the latter, changing their marketing tactics to other resources, specifically brand advertising.

For example, the collective marketing spending of Booking Holdings and Expedia Group through TripAdvisor reached a four-year low in 2018, and their contribution to TripAdvisor as a percentage of its total revenue hit rock bottom since it became a public company in late 2011.

In fact, in 2018, as reported in TripAdvisor’s year-end financial filing, Booking Holdings and Expedia Group’s contribution to TripAdvisor’s total revenue fell to 37 percent, or $597.5 million, compared with 43 percent, or $669.1 million, in 2017.

The trajectory of Booking Holdings and Expedia Group’s marketing spend in TripAdvisor are detailed in the chart below. That collective marketing spend peaked in 2015 when TripAdvisor and Booking Holdings announced an instant booking partnership, and has trended downward ever since for a variety of reasons. Chief among them are that the major online travel agencies have seen a reduction of their marketing efficiency in performance, or search engine, advertising and have put new emphasis into brand marketing, including TV, as a way to attract direct bookings.

Expedia-Booking Holdings Spending in TripAdvisor 2012-2018

Source: TripAdvisor’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings

While TripAdvisor has had to adjust to the hardball dynamic of reduced marketing spend from the two largest U.S.-headquartered online travel agencies, the picture is not all doom and gloom.

For years, TripAdvisor, and other metasearch sites such as Trivago and Kayak, have been criticized for an over-dependency on marketing spend from just two major online travel agencies, and their subsidiaries.

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