Tripadvisor Inc

NASDAQ:TRIP

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the TripAdvisor’s Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

I’d now like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today, Angela White, VP of IR. Angela, please go ahead.

[Angela White, VP of IR]

Thank you, Jay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to TripAdvisor’s third quarter 2021 financial results call. Joining me today are, Steve Kaufer, CEO, and Ernst Teunissen, CFO and Chief Executive, Viator, TheFork and Cruise Critic.

Last night after market closed, we distributed and filed our third quarter 2021 earnings release and made available our shareholder letter on our Investor Relations website. In the release, you’ll find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures and most comparable GAAP measure discussed on this call. Also on our Investor Relations website, you’ll find supplemental financial information, which also includes reconciliations of certain non-GAAP financial measures of success on this call, as well as other metrics. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that this call may contain estimates and other forward looking statements that represent management views as of today, November 9, 2021, TripAdvisor disclaims any obligation to update these statements to reflect future events or circumstances. Please refer to our earnings release as well as our filings with the SEC for information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward looking statements.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Steve.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Thank you, Angela. Good morning, everyone. So before I turn the call over to questions and further commentary from myself and Ernst, I wanted to speak to my transition news. Last night, as you undoubtedly heard, I informed investors and our employees my intentions to step down from the company as CEO at some point in 2022, or soon as soon as a successor is named by our board of directors. I co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000, with three other amazing people, Nick Shanny, Langley Steiner and Tom Palka. Our goal to help people plan and take extraordinary vacations all over the world, powered by the knowledge of people like you who have been there before.

Now while there’s never a perfect time, I feel very comfortable that now is the right time for me to announce my transition, the hospitality industry successfully emerging from the pandemic. But profitable again, is the Queen said leaders in the company. And we were successful in using the Time reported to us during this pandemic, to reinvent ourselves, delivering an enhanced focus on our experiences and dining sectors. In creating and launching our first subscription product. We have a clear set of priorities. And while we have a lot of work ahead to get there, we have a terrific set of team members who I know are up to the challenge.

This company’s already changed the way billions travel and it’s extraordinarily well positioned to create deliver a new set of innovations in the years and decades ahead. As a trusted global brand, as the most popular travel website and as a major influencer in a $5 trillion industry, we are still a story of upside potential in a massive and really fun category. As I said yesterday to my trip class of family, the work continues, I have complete confidence that our experienced board of directors will select a great successor and that TripAdvisor’s next chapter will be just as exciting as the amazing journey of the past 20 plus years. And in the meantime, I will remain at the helm as fully engaged as I am at driving innovation, building teams and helping our customers.

With that, I’ll turn it over to Ernst before we take your questions.

[Ernst Teunissen]

Thanks, Steve. Thanks for everyone for joining. We were very pleased to see our revenue and adjusted EBITDA level step up significantly this quarter from last quarter, reflecting signs of a continued strong return to travel. We’re very pleased to see the recovery and consumer travel continue. This is reflected in the gradual return to 2019 levels we’ve seen over the last few quarters in some pockets as we noted in our shareholder letter, we’re actually starting to meet or surpass going 19 levels. Revenue in the third quarter was $303 million reflecting year-over-year growth of 101% and reaching 71% of 2019 levels. We call out that our experiences and dining revenue in particular is showing a very strong recovery that is not fully reflected yet in Q3 revenue. For instance, on a booking level, our combined experiences, businesses has been up versus 2019 October and the start of November. We’re not out of the woods yet with COVID. It’s still impacting us and although we’re cautious about Q4, we remain very optimistic that the recovery is taking root and our bullish about travel and our business in 2022.

With that, let’s jump into Q&A.

[Operator]

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Naved Khan with Truist Securities. Your line is open.

[Naved Khan, Truist Securities]

Hi, thanks a lot. Steve. We’re going to miss you after the transition, came as a surprise. But hopefully we’ll see you for the next call as well. I just had a couple had a question on the comments in the letter, you said you’re considering options to crystallize the value of before Viator, maybe elaborate a bit on the range of possibilities here? Does it include a potential spin off or potentially a sale of the business or is it more around optimizing this for growth and margins?

[Ernst Teunissen]

Naved this is Ernst. I will take this one. We have two very strong assets in Viator and TheFork, they were strong growth companies before the pandemic. They’re category leaders in their markets. Viator is a global leader in experiences and markets with a very big can. TheFork is a European leader in restaurant reservations increasingly moving into more FinTech areas with TheFork pay and gift cards. And now both are recovering very nicely and beyond our expectations. And we believe coming out of the pandemic with even a stronger competitive position and strong leadership teams that operate with great autonomy within TripAdvisor.

Now clearly, the financial profile of these businesses is very different from our core TripAdvisor business. They have higher growth, but also lower profitability due to investment opportunities that we’ve been capitalizing on. They also have clear, identifiable and proven lifetime value that we can ascribe versus the CPC and media model that we have in TripAdvisor, of course, which makes us more comfortable to spend for long term benefit and particularly for Viator we’ve been in here in 2021.

Now we know that pure play category winners like Viator and TheFork in the private and in the public markets get substantial often revenue or gross profit related valuations rather than EBITDA multiple, which is the dominant way we believe our TripAdvisor stock gets valued. And more pronounced, some of the park valuation will make it easier for us to invest appropriately in these businesses and make acquisitions in these businesses. So essentially believe there are options to better crystallize the right valuation for these businesses, which we don’t believe is currently reflected. We are not outright sellers to respond to one of your questions of either asset or at least thought in the near term.

And especially in the case of Viator, there’s a strategic importance to TripAdvisor having a significant influence in the company due to the importance of experiences to the TripAdvisor value prop for our consumers. And also we think there’s a value growth opportunity for both Viator and TheFork over the years to come that we definitely want to be part of. But there are some options. So one area of options would be to enhance disclosure in our segment reporting, but there’s also a family of options that we are considering that go a little further in separating out and in separately financing these businesses. Now, we haven’t got more detail to share at this point and we haven’t yet committed to any particular course of action. But we wanted to give you a heads up that we are considering options over the months and quarters to come.

[Naved Khan, Truist Securities]

Super helpful. Maybe just a related question. If I look at the sales and marketing line as a percentage of revenue, it was higher than what we had got and I guess you’re obviously using some of the funds to kind of grow these businesses both experiences and dining. So how should we think about investment levels in 2022 as it relates to Viator and dining?

[Ernst Teunissen]

Yes. As I said before for Viator, we have this year pushed further into our lifetime value and model. We feel pretty confident that we’ve seen large consistency in the past in how users come back and how they repeat. And so we feel confident to spend beyond just the immediate return. And that of course has a near term impact and increases advertising but it’s actually good for long term revenue and is ROI positive over a longer term timeframe. So we have gladly done this year and we’ve been actually very pleasantly surprised how much we could put to work this year at a good ROI levels and grow the Viator business. We’ve been very successful and expanding the marketing program in that way. And so we feel good about that. It is near term increase as marketing as a percentage of revenue issue as you highlight, but we think it’s a good ROI.

We think its good business and it cements the very strong position that we have. So you saw sales and marketing as a percent of revenue ticked down in Q3 from Q2. But we are leaning on the experience side, but we can leave it a little on the hotel side as well in Q3 and have taper that into October and in Q4. But for Viator we will continue as long as we see the good ROI we’ll continue to spend.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of James Lee of Mizuho Securities. Your lines open.

[James Lee, Mizuho Securities]

Thanks for taking my questions. Steve thanks for your leadership of the years. And maybe can you talk about your decision to make that transition next year and also secondly, in terms of finding a successor what kind of background and experience you and the board are looking forward, is it more travel related or is it more technology related? Thank you.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Sure. Thank you, James. Let’s see. So as I kind of said in my opening remarks, while there’s no right time, I think this is a darn good time to be able to start the transition. As they say sometime in 2022, I’m looking for it to be a smooth transition as possible. I certainly wasn’t going to make any move over the past 18 months. It was pretty traumatic all over the travel industry. But when we look at our future now, we see us clearly coming out of the pandemic, love the new initiatives at play at TripAdvisor, overall the business is recovering in all of its parts. So it’s a pretty good time. I think we have a strong management team and new faces, we’ve tenured faces. So again, while no time is perfect, I think now makes a lot of sense.

To the second part of the question as to what the board is looking for, travel experience would be great, subscription experience would be great. E-commerce I mean it’s a core part of our business today and going forward. So there’s no reason anyone should read into anything about my transition other than kind of what it says on the face. Company is in a good position. I’ve been at the helm for, by the time I’d depart will be 22 years. It’s a good opportunity, tons of potential in front of the company. And so this isn’t the question of needing change. This isn’t a question of looking to do something dramatically different, but I wanted to give the board plenty of time to select truly the best leader because it’s a gem of a company with a ton of upside in front of us.

[James Lee, Mizuho Securities]

Great, thanks, Steve.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly of Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

[Jed Kelly, Oppenheimer]

Hey, great, thanks for taking my questions. Just two if I may. One just to understand the sales and marketing this quarter, I think it was 90% of our 2019 levels. Can you speak, is that being more invested in the core hotel platform subscriptions or experiences and dining? And can you just speak to the change into subscription policy going forward and sort of how you think about TripAdvisor plus into 22? Thank you.

[Ernst Teunissen]

Hey Jed I will take the first part and then I will hand over to Steve for the second part. In terms of advertising, yes, we have I told you before about the leading into Viator for marketing and good ROIs that we’ve seen in our hotel business and ability to spend more as a percentage compared to before because CPCs have been very strong. And our hotel business in the third quarter, particularly in the U.S. was very strong. Our U.S. option was above 2019 in the quarter. So we’ve seen favorable pricing levels which always disproportionately favors pay channels. So we’ve been able to lean in there as well. As I said before, on the hotels that we’ve started to taper that October and further into Q4, we wanted to spend into the holiday season, in the summer vacation season, in the summer and that is driving the relative performance versus 2019. Over the longer term, we expect that to start to normalize again for the hotel business. It’s just a phenomenon of good CPCs.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Thanks, Jed, and I’ll take part two there regarding plus. I couldn’t be more excited about what vacation funds this kind of change in the model can deliver for our travelers. And of course, how well it works for our suppliers, remember the original instant savings model had us offer discount rate upfront. But that did cause more supplier facing problems than we had anticipated. So we’re nothing if not a nimble company able to adapt and when we heard that feedback and when supply started to be a bit constrained, we shifted. And so we’re in beta testing now with vacation funds, which again offers the hotel rates at retail within offers the same economic benefit that just comes a little bit later and so at the actual state time. We’re working on kind of the flows to make sure that that’s well understood. It’s literally the same cash that the end user is going to get.

So they’re benefitting by being able to achieve an impressive savings, be able to stay an extra night, dine at a restaurant, save it up for the next trip or put it straight to your bank account as cash and spend it any which way the traveler wants. So for TripAdvisor for the benefit of the product, this unlocks supply. So we’re able to get a lot more supply, a lot more hotels available for sale as part of a plus offering than we were before. That’s really exciting. It’s easier for us to onboard independent properties onto the program because we’re not asking them to load what’s called the rate quota, a special rate just for TripAdvisor. This is the regular retail rates. It’s not competitive with their own website and just organizationally and tactically it’s easier on the part of the hotel. So you bring all that inventory on. We’re highlighting great discounts at the top of our sort order, delivering really nice additional value to customers.

And then kind of how we think about it in 2022, we remain focused on the U.S. market, we want to make sure we get to that product market fit before we expend the energy to roll it out to the rest of world is. As everyone understands the U.S. is a very big market. So it’s plenty big for us to test against. And we’ll continue iterating until we have that fit and then as I said we go international.

[Jed Kelly, Oppenheimer]

Thanks. Just so I’m understanding the hotel would pay that initial discount to back to the travelers that’s coming out of the hotel even though they’re seeing the retail rate.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

You can think of it as from the travelers perspective, they’re looking at a regular retail rate that they use our meta search engine that they compare any way they want. And they see that they’re paying the same rate that they would pay anywhere else. And then as they go through the shopping funnel, they learn and they’ll also get $150 back, $300 back whatever the vacation funds number is based upon where they’re staying and how long they’re staying. As soon as that traveler makes that stay or has the stay they get pinged with congrats your $150 is now in your bank account as vacation funds for you. And the traveler can then do whatever they want with those funds. That’s a pretty amazing savings. Underneath the covers what’s happening is we are funding that, TripAdvisor is funding that as a benefit of a Plus membership. Hotels are paying us the regular commission that they would pay essentially to any online distribution platform. So from a hotels perspective, it’s clearly a pay for performance. When we send a booking and the booking happens the hotel pays us that’s what they’re used to doing all day long with every other OTA.

And essentially, we’re not treated much differently. We look to get an additional perk or two from the properties to otherwise improve the value proposition for travel or to make that stay extra special. But to the economics, we’re funding an amazing discount far more valuable than regular sort of loyalty points, if you will from other folks and the traveler gets that benefit and we get the commission from the hotel. Our financial gain is all TripAdvisor’s win is part of that subscription fee. So the $99 that we’re charging that lands for us and generate the renewal rates, the ongoing revenue stream as essentially we have the opportunity to fund the loyalty program with the commissions from the hotel program.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan of Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

[Deepak Mathivanan, Wolfe Research]

Great, thanks for taking the questions. Steve, I do want to mention that we will miss you. So just a couple of questions. A follow up to the question before. Thanks for all the color on Plus was very helpful. But curious, have your conversations with hotel chains and OTA partners post a model change announcement has been? Are they now more comfortable to come on board? Should we expect kind of big change to participate? What are your expectations there?

And then sort of second question also related to the prior one about the economics? I mean, would you funding the perks for the travelers offset by the commissions that you get from hotels and then also the cost from traveler. How does it compare to kind of like cost per click that you generate? I mean, do you think this model is going to be accretive under this arrangement? Thanks so much.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Thanks, Deepak. Thanks for your kind words. Two excellent questions in there, so how our conversations gone with hotel chains? Let me back it up and sort of point out or explain our supply perspective. When we were doing instant discounts, we needed to have the chain participation or chain blessing because it was actually lower than what was on their own, lower than what was on their own site. And we thought that would work because we would have a pay wall. This was a gated, a very, very closed user group. But it turns out that that wasn’t enough.

Now that we’ve moved to a retail model, we would love, absolutely appreciate the chains participating but to be clear in our beta site right now, you see a lot of chain properties already on the system showing the exact same rate as is on the brand.com website. Because it’s a regular retail rate we’re not, it’s not bothering the chains in terms of violating any rate parity. That allows us through other aggregators, not the chains to be able to represent that we have some of the best properties in the world from the Hilton’s and the Marriott’s and HTs because we’re getting them through other sources, sometimes directly through channel managers, sometimes through other aggregators. And I’d say it’s safe. It’s not violating the rate parity piece.

So while I invite all the chains to participate, we’re in conversations, some will join now, some will join later, I predict. But the point for more economic models, I don’t actually need them to participate because we have aggregators including our very public partnership with trip.com, who has access to a lot of global inventory and that inventory can show up on our site in a rate parity safe manner.

To the second question, economics versus our CPC model, do we think that this will be accretive? We think it’s going to be wonderfully accretive. So part of the challenge/opportunity of having so many travelers looking at hotels on our site is that we offer a lot of kind of free browsing, and we don’t make much money because somebody doesn’t click. And then when the traveler does click on our meta offering over to an OTA, the vast, vast, vast majority of those clickers don’t actually book because they’re not ready to or whatever reason, and therefore, technically, we got paid on a CPC.

But in reality, since it didn’t book it didn’t generate any profits for our clients. It’s in effect lowering the value of the next click that we’re going to get. So what I mean to say is, the number of travelers that we send to the OTAs, that still are not booking is the opportunity that we see to make this a much more accretive model for TripAdvisor because we’re sending people into our own transaction flow. We’re giving them a very clear incentive on why they should book with us, which is all of this cash back all these vacation funds. And if they’re going to save more than $99, on the very first booking, it becomes us, we expect a very simple equation to charge $99 million for the subscription, they have $150 cash back, maybe they don’t even have to pay anything upfront, and we just give them $50 cash back at the end, lots of ways to get folks to sign up. And then that’s $99 we weren’t seeing in the CPC model.

Then take it the next step and now you are a paying member to a travel subscription to a travel club. We believe a number of people are going to say well I belong to TripAdvisor Plus, therefore I’m starting my next trip on TripAdvisor looking at the Plus hotels and experiences and all the other offerings and so we’ll get repeat business in a much higher degree because you’re a member. And then whether you’re making additional transaction however many additional transactions that travelers doing over the course of the year that’s all generally speaking, incremental revenue to us. We monitor what TripAdvisor Plus does with the CPC clicks and obviously, we have to keep a careful eye on that and make sure our own conversion flow more than makes up for the clicks that don’t go over to meta clients.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Brian Fitzgerald of Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Brian Fitzgerald, Wells Fargo]

Thanks, guys. Steve, congratulations and we will miss you. A couple things I want to ask about was the pullback that you saw in September. Was that consistent across regions? Did Europe stay strong in September? And then on Plus I wonder if you’re seeing any early indications or dynamics in terms of that maybe the customer cohorts there? And are you seeing a differentiated use of experiences or Viator or TheFork anything with these Plus members that are saying hey, they’re converting into other product usage better?

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Excellent questions. Yes go ahead Ernst.

[Ernst Teunissen]

Yes. I will take the first one Brian. I’ll give it over to you Steve. In terms of September, we saw more of an impact in the U.S. on the Delta . Europe had been recovering, the U.S. was the first to recover, as you know, in Q1 and Q2, much stronger than Europe. But Europe’s are caught up from a traffic perspective in Q3 and we saw revenue improved throughout Q3 including September. Now was that impacted by Delta? Maybe it would have grown even more without Delta. So we saw more of a step back as a result of Delta in September in the U.S. in October. That has been moving up again in the US. But that was the more pronounced impact geographically of Delta for us.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Thanks. And with regard to Plus, candidly, we’ve been kind of really focused on our shift to vacation funds and how we clearly present this value proposition to the traveler. So excellent questions on, have we seen cohorts of existing Plus subscribers now move over to experiences. But truly we haven’t been kind of focused on building that up yet with our efforts of clearly targeting that golden part of 160 million times that people click over on expensive trips that should be great Plus candidates.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Mario Lu, Barclays. Your line is open.

[Mario Lu, Barclays]

Great, thanks for taking the questions. I have two more follow up on Plus. So you already mentioned some hotel chains and aggregators added to the platform. Anyway to help quantify how meaningful the numbers of hotels were added to plus after the change to the vacation funds was made? And then similarly, on the customer side, any color you could provide on if this change impacted conversion, or user engagement? Thank you.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Thanks Mario. Excellent questions. Those are the kind of the exact ones that we are studying looking at and trying to grow with respect to the number of new hotels. I simply point out we’re able to tap into a lot more of the trip.com inventory as an example because they had a bunch of properties that had a special rate that we had put live on instant discount. But obviously, they have way more properties at a regular retail rate. And with vacation funds model all of a sudden, all of those properties can come online. Similarly, with some of the other aggregators we worked with, it was just more flexibility in being able to bring on more inventory so long as we kept the rate at parity with other sites.

We also had our independent supply efforts and this would go back several years, but we had signed up quite a few independent properties that connected directly with our back end that would offer their rates and by not having to go reach out to those properties and negotiate a specific discount, we’re able to bring all those properties live essentially immediately because they were kind of already signed up and that’s in the 1000s. But it’s a close to a handpicked of 1,000s.

The most interesting part of the question is really that conversion rate, and how’s it going, and I can’t offer much at this point, because we’ve just rolled out to a fraction of just our U.S. audience. But that’s key. We need to make sure that the language on the site explaining the value proposition, the flow, the ability to easily book a vacation from the property or Plus property because the photos are good, the rooms are well understood, the payment happens smoothly, the errors don’t exist, getting the bugs out of the system. And that’s basically the stage we’re at now as we test it on a small slice of the traffic. So as we make improvements and as it become better and better we will allow more and more and obviously we hope for 100% rollout as soon as we can.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Tom White of D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.

[Unidentified Analyst]

Thanks so much. This is Travis for Tom. First question I was wondering about your monthly unique user trends in Q3. It seemed to improve and sort of in line with the trajectory of revenue recovery. And you talk a bit about specifically what you’re seeing in terms of user engagement, maybe the specific region, the type of trip, the willingness to book and spin, and whether these engagement differs in any meaningful ways than from earlier days of pandemic. Thank you.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Yes, we saw a step up again in users as a percentage of 2019 in the third quarter, we were 70% in the second quarter and we went up to 76% in the third quarter. I think the most important trends to point out are geographic. So we saw that the U.S. was clearly ahead in terms of traffic recovery in the first and second quarter to the rest of the world, Europe really caught up to it. And so in the third quarter, Europe and the U.S. are sort of very similar in traffic as a percentage of 2019. So that’s one important trend. Europe starting slow this year, but catching up in the third quarter, the rest of the world also a significant part of our usual traffic. Outside of the U.S. and outside of Europe has been much slower to recover, and is therefore dragging down the overall of 76% versus 2019 that be reached in the third quarter.

[Unidentified Analyst]

Thank you. And then for my second question, I was wondering, in regards to the [HMNP] segment, you mentioned that the monthly revenue dipped a little bit in September versus July, August and September, as a percentage of 19. Could you elaborate a bit on that and talk a bit more? I know, you’ve discussed briefly about October, but a bit more on how October looked in that segment? Thank you.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Yes. So September was, as someone asked a question before about the impact of Delta, we saw an impact of Delta, we believe in September in the U.S. So that impacted HMNP. The CPCs have continued to be strong in September, and the behavior of our partners in the auction has been very consistent and similar. But volume was impacted as a result in September. We’ve seen improvement of that environment in October. I also said earlier in the call that we tapered some of our marketing in October and into the fourth quarter. So that’s going to impact, we spent more in the third quarter. But the general environment in October for the U.S. has improved from September, clearly.

[Unidentified Analyst]

Great, thanks so much, and congrats on the new chapter Steve.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from line of Vince Cipiel of Cleveland Research. Your line is open.

[Vince Cipiel, Cleveland Research]

Great, thanks for taking my question. Curious, when you look at the existing base of Trip Plus members, now it’s still a newer program, but see anything interesting in terms of engagement or repeat booking activity of Trip Plus members versus the average user on TripAdvisor?

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Good question. We do see repeat bookings from Plus members. That’s nice. Unfortunately, we don’t really have a great way to compare that to whether those are just people who travel a lot and would be repeated booking through our meta auction because we don’t always see if we don’t see their actual booking behavior. So yes it’s nice to see we have more Plus bookings than we have plus subscribers, if you will, because people are coming back and booking more and clearly, that’s benefiting us, but I can’t compare it to another site terribly well, at this point.

It’s one of the things that we watch in terms of and we think the vacation funds model will give us kind of yet another data point on that. There’s a reasonable thesis that says, an instant discount kind of sounds great. You get the money right there. But vacation funds model where you’re sort of building up a bank knowing that you can take that bank and take it as cash anytime you want. It’s as good as cash. One way to think about it is an extremely rich loyalty program.

But the other way to think about it or a complimentary way to think about it is it’s building up a bank of things that you can continue to do on TripAdvisor. And so people have expressed to us they like the notion of saving for that next trip. They like the notion of doing a few more purchases on TripAdvisor so that they’ll have some more fun saved up. Again for the same trip or the next trip, but it’s, it goes back to the travel jar that some folks used to have, where you just save some extra money along the way to go spend on that wonderful trip. And I think we’re tapping into a bit of that for a segment of our audience. And we see that I think in some of our repeat bookings.

[Vince Cipiel, Cleveland Research]

Thanks. And my second question, I think earlier on the call, you mentioned that the commission the hotel would be paying wouldn’t be that dissimilar to what they would pay other OTAs but then I’m trying to think about the economics from a hotel perspective if they’re paying a similar commission, as well as providing an amenity and a potential upgrade how does this channel compare in total cost relative to other distribution channels with Plus?

[Steve Kaufer]

Excellent question. So we’re quite flexible on the hotel side. So when we approached an independent hotelier, for instance, we have perhaps a minimum commission but then we point out the better deal that we can present to our traveler means you’re going to get more visibility on TripAdvisor. And so let’s say a hotel might pay a, let’s call it a 15% commission, that’s probably less than what they’re paying to other OTAs. So it’s a bit cheaper of a channel. And that might be a hook for us to help persuade the hotelier that it’s worth signing up. Mind you, it’s very easy to sign up. So there’s no like organizational or there’s no logistical or technical barrier there. So we get the hotel to the sign up, and then the messages.

And if you add a perk, and it could be as simple as a bottle of wine or fruit plate, free upgrade if available there’s a little bit of very small amount of cost, maybe and then, because that offer looks more compelling on TripAdvisor, it rises higher in our score border and hopefully, that hotel receives more bookings. They don’t have to have it. But many properties are, it’s relatively easy for them to offer a $20 off of $50 dining charge. And so it helps get them in the restaurant, helps get them spending the money on premises. And the whole notion of vacation funds allows someone to build up this credit and we encourage the hotel and we can help the hotel market the ancillary services whereby those credits can in fact be spent on property. Hotels love that. Travelers appreciate the ability to get the extra amenity or the extra thing at the hotel. And it’s all up to the property if they want to participate, kind of in exchange for more demand. So that’s how we view our own ecosystem working.

[Vince Cipiel, Cleveland Research]

Thanks for the color, Steve, and best of luck in the next chapter.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line is Kevin Kopelman of Cowen. Your line is open.

[Kevin Kopelman, Cowen]

Thanks so much. I had a couple questions. First, could you talk about how you think about TV advertising and whether now that we’re in the recovery, whether you consider returning to TV?

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

I can start. With regard to TripAdvisor Plus, as I’ve said before, we feel we have an extremely highly qualified audience already on our site, who we have the ability to educate as they are shopping for a hotel. So while TV is nominally effective for overall brand advertising for raising overall awareness we feel we have plenty of traffic on our site today at the right point in time that we can educate, drive home the benefits of TripAdvisor Plus without spending an incremental dime. Once you have the product market fit and run the growth ramp that we’re really excited about Amen to all different vehicles that enable us to put fuel on the fire.

But I’m pretty clear I want to be able to show, we need to be able to show ourselves and then we would be sharing with you that this thing is a rocket ship and here’s why putting more fuel on the fire would make a lot of sense. I don’t think I’m of the mindset that I should do that level of branding on a speculative nature. I think there’s another angle as to whether we approach television for our Viator and Fork businesses, because they are in a different investment mode. They have a different opportunity to capitalize on share gain and they’re also doing extremely well right now without any of those other media pieces. So I don’t view it as something that is necessary. But certainly could be additive over the course of next year and those other brands if we choose to do so.

[Kevin Kopelman, Cowen]

Thanks. And if I could ask an unrelated question. Could you give any more color or detail on how we should anticipate the experiences in dining or let me rephrase that how well it did in the month of October for revenue because I think you alluded to the bookings being higher than the revenue trend for Q3. So any color on how that trended in October would be helpful? Thanks.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Yes. We saw a bit of an impact from Delta in September, also on the experiences business but experiences roared back in October doing really strongly. And as we call it out on a bookings level and of course, bookings are a leading indicator of revenue because the revenue recognition is at consumption rather than at the time of booking. But on the booking level so the combined experiences, points of sales, Viator, TripAdvisor third party, we’re above 2019 levels which is very, very encouraging, and has been sort of the last step in a very strong recovery this year getting bookings about 2019. What is strong about that is Advisor was clearly leading the way earlier in the year Viator is well above that level of above 2019 on the bookings level, but TripAdvisor has been catching up. And so to be above 2019 our bookings level for the combined points of sale and experiences it’s just a very strong signal for us that this market is coming back strongly. And our position is very good in it. So we’re very pleased with that.

[Kevin Kopelman, Cowen]

Great and Steve we will definitely miss you on the calls and best of luck.

[Operator]

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

[Unidentified Analyst]

Good morning. This is Dave on for Dough. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one, in regards to your strong performance and experiences, are you seeing evidence that travelers are increasingly looking ahead because of the pandemic. And it’s just the behavior that you think could accelerate the adoption of online booking and experiences coming out of the pandemic? And secondly, for Trip Plus in the letter you talked about for travelers coming to your site, removing the payoffs to saving on hotels can you elaborate on that comment a little bit? What that means?

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

On the first part, the sound quality wasn’t great. You were asking, is this experienced as evidence of what sorry? Can you say that again?

[Unidentified Analyst]

Are you seeing any evidence that travelers are increasingly booking ahead because of the pandemic? And this is a behavior that could accelerate the adoption of online booking experiences coming out of the pandemic?

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Yes. I think we’re seeing a number of very important trends appearing. One was a direct result of the pandemic is that we’ve seen a lot more domestic experience consumption. That was very strong. We attended to index on international travel Americans going to Rome or Paris or to London. But we’ve seen such a strong performance of our U.S. and European customers actually consuming experiences locally, and so domestic was very strong where pre-pandemic we skew the city experiences. We started to skew to more outdoorsy experiences either water sports, or hiking or canoeing. And that was a large, big market that opened. And what makes us feel very optimistic now is that we have clearly established in the ability in the minds of our consumers to be very relevant in niche market domestic and more outdoorsy experiences. It’s great.

We expect that to stick as we recover from COVID. And then city travel is coming back, but not yet at the levels that it was before. And international travel definitely is lagging at the moment where we’ve worked before. And so what makes us optimistic is we’ve established now deeper penetration in domestic and outdoors and when international and city comes back in full force, we think that will be additive for the business. So strong signals we think.

[Ernst Teunissen]

I would add that I think we’re playing to a very macro trend of people looking to do more on their vacations combined with your ability to book on the phone, combined with the bringing of this inventory online over the past decade and I think we’re seeing the tipping point where more and more folks are planning to book what they’re going to do online and we’re in the pole position there. We’ve got Viator has a beautiful business strategy of licensing their inventory to all the major distribution channels, of course, TripAdvisor is also one of them. But having a tremendous supply footprint, great products, most inch, all interesting markets, key things that you want to do and that you want to make sure you have a seat on that tour before you get there because if you’re going to, it’s too scary to arrive in your destination and not know if you can do it. COVID I believe accelerated because you want to know what’s open, you want to know, the cleanliness, safety concerns all the rest of it. But then again we’ve taught people how easy and convenient it is to book in advance. Experiences have always been referred to as the last of the major categories to come online after air and hotel. And so we see COVID having taught people the ability and sometimes the necessity of doing this booking online and I think we’re going to benefit from that trend for decades to come.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

So there is a simultaneous trend next to the planning in advance, which is because the phone has become much more important also for experiences. There’s also an increased ability to actually book things while you’re on the trip and so one of the big opportunities that we have and have been capitalizing on is, if someone has planned in advance and did an experience, we can help them do another experience on the trip. And so it is both increased planning upfront, but also increase ability in market to market to them.

[Ernst Teunissen]

And then to your second question on TripAdvisor Plus in the paywall, sorry for the strange reference. In the current instant savings model, some of the properties that you click through to find the discount, you can book immediately. Other properties you have to actually buy Plus first and then we will show you what the discount is on all those rooms. So we refer to that as a paywall experience. In both cases, in the first case you’re buying Plus with the transaction. But in the second case, you actually have to make the purchase before you can see all the room details. And that’s a natural barrier to customer adoption. It’s something we had to do because the supply challenges and that whole aspect completely goes away in the vacation funds model. And so we know that that’s going to be a big win from the consumer side of things. And so it’s another reason why I’m particularly excited about the upcoming launch of vacation funds.

[Unidentified Analyst]

Great. Thanks for the color Steve god luck and we will miss you as well.

[Operator]

Thank you. There are no further question at this time and I would like to turn the call back to Steve for closing remarks.

[Stephen Kaufer, CEO]

Terrific. Well, thank you. Thank you everyone. A very special thank you to all the TripAdvisor team members all around the world who continue to put their all into helping hospitality businesses, travelers, diners emerge from this pandemic. We’re quite optimistic. We’re extremely optimistic about the recovery of our industry. And look forward to updating you next quarter on our core businesses and all of our new initiatives. Thank you again and stay safe.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.