Behind TripAdvisor's Surprise Acquisition of Viator
Skift Take
TripAdvisor's acquisition of Viator suggests that a mobile becomes the defacto means of discovery there will be a burgeoning emphasis on in-destination bookings with real-time availability.
In many respects, TripAdvisor's $200 million acquisition of Viator is a shocker, rivaled in that regard only by the Priceline Group's twin stunners, namely its 2013 acquisition of Kayak for $1.9 billion, and its acquisition of OpenTable for $2.6 billion.
Not for the price, but for the timing.
Just about 30 hours or so before the Viator acquisition went down, financial analyst Michael Olson of Piper Jaffray put the following question [abridged] to TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer during the company's second quarter earnings call:
"What other categories [beyond hotels] do you look at to further monetize your existing kind of review content and visitors, for example, events and attractions bookings or other categories?
After waxing on about the "phenomenal" opportunity in restaurants, Kaufer said:
"Yes, we see other opportunities to help travelers because we have travelers coming to TripAdvisor doing things other than just hotels and restaurants and certainly attractions of tours, or guides, or other travel related things are on the site. But there’s only so much folks can do it at one time and we have some great partners in that space, and our focus at the moment is restaurants and how we can monetize, in general, our non-hotel traffic."
"So it’s a great question and we got st
