TRIP
#Yes as you all know, we don't provide a formal guidance but we have made the comments that ---+ a few comments.
One is we see our comp easing in the second half.
This is the comps from the IB rollout but also the meta-comps that we have highlighted before.
We are also commenting though that there are recent softer trends that we have highlighted and they make us more cautious as we look at the rest of the year.
And then to answer the pricing question, the instant book price is generally speaking be best price that we get from all of our instant booking partners which is frequently the hotel itself, chain or independent, and then likely one or more of the Priceline companies and then perhaps another or a different OTA.
I have said many times that instant book price is not actually the best price in our meta-auction and so since travelers the world over care most or care hugely about price, when our instant book price is not the best price, we are generally not featuring it at the top of the page because we know it is not what users are going to want the most.
Our goal is going to continue to sign up independent hotels, chains, online travel agencies, resellers, every possible partner who is able to take the booking for a hotel so that when you come to TripAdvisor and use the instant book product you will see TripAdvisor having as good a price as any of our meta-partners and frankly as anyone across the web has.
And so we measure ---+ getting technically here ---+ we measure the meet, beat, lose ratio of how our instant book price compares to our own meta-auction to know how many times a smart traveler should be picking instant book option because it is equal to the best price in the meta-auction.
Thanks, <UNK>.
Two good questions.
We are not at the point to release total supply, direct supply numbers.
I think we talked about having the vast majority of the chains on board and we have quite a few independent properties.
One of the nice points of that independent property piece is that so many of them are hearing about us through their channel partner or aware of us because they are responding to reviews and so they are actually going through our self-service module to sign up.
And if that independent hotel uses an Internet booking engine that we support and we support well over 100 now, it is pretty easy for that property to come on in, put in their credit card, hit a few buttons and away they go.
And then they are able to take direct bookings via TripAdvisor.
And again, they like it, feedback is good.
We have had the strongest desire to be as broad as we can with instant booking so our natural focus has been the big chains because they can bring on thousands of properties at once and of course, the big OTAs and we have a super partnership with the Priceline brands and so you have seen both not only booking.com but also Priceline and Agoda appear in our auctions, not only in the US but in many more markets as well.
And as we expand all of that inventory to that OTA relationship, we are delivering instant book to more customers in more languages.
So the question of the instant book conversion via supplier direct versus an OTA, it is a little hard for us to measure simply because it is apples to oranges.
The big chain supply we have tends to be kind of the big names, the high confidence and in general those tend to convert quite well, oftentimes better than a good OTA partner because there is some ---+ near as we can tell, some brand preference for the supplier direct.
It is a little more nuanced when it comes to the individual properties signing up, whether the consumer preferences an OTA versus the independent.
I'd leave you with the generalized statement that if the independent or the supplier direct has excellent content in our system, so good room descriptions, good photos and absolutely have equal pricing, then the supplier is likely to get a higher share of the bookings.
When we ask ourselves what matters the most ---+ I want to be very clear ---+ it is price.
So hoteliers who are very good at making sure their own website has the best pricing and that is what is shown on our site reaps the benefits of that where pricing is variable across different of their partners, then the hotel itself will lose some of the bookings because consumers prefer the cheapest price simply put.
The monetization gap that we currently have so global monetizes roughly at about 30% of ---+ phone, not the tablets, the phone monetizes roughly at 30%, one-third of desktop and we have seen that improve over time.
It is better today than it was a year ago and we continue to believe that we are well-positioned to continue to make improvements and we lead with our mobile product.
So as we think into the future, we do anticipate that we see further conversions of the monetization of the phone and desktop.
Where that will exactly land is a little difficult to predict at this point.
And I would caution folks that sometimes when you hear us and others talk about mobile, it includes tablet.
We try to be clear when we talk about our phone monetization being one-third because tablet for us looks pretty close to desktop.
Sure.
This is <UNK>.
Absolutely the biggest factor is the consumer building a habit and the expectations of being able to book with us on the app.
So there is the macro and I think almost every travel company at least will talk about how the phone bookings monetize less per booking than desktop because the phone is still used at least in my opinion for the lower decision support purchases.
It is the easier hotel, it is the one night, you know what you want, there is less research involved.
And the heavier more expensive purchases are happening, the less commoditized purchases still are happening more on the desktop.
As users' comfort grow on the phone, as phone apps become even better, that will lessen and the average price of what is booked on the phone will come closer to desktop.
Average price is a good proxy for average amount that any of us make on those bookings.
For us, the habit of booking and rebooking and rebooking on the phone, on the app specifically, is going to be what we believe drives our future monetization model.
We kind of have the best of many worlds because we have this awesome meta price comparison engine on any device that allows the traveler to make sure they are getting the best deal and we have moved into the transaction business so that they don't have to go anywhere else to get that best deal.
They can book right on TripAdvisor If you believe as we do that it is going to be an app world and to many, it is already in app world, to Facebook is already in app world but in that sort of travel purchase, it is moving in that direction.
Our app being able to help people find what they are looking for, make sure they are getting the best price, click off in a meta model if they are not getting the best price, use their stored credit card to easily book when we do have the best price so that they made the travel research, they made the travel purchase, now they are taking TripAdvisor on the road with them in that single app to deliver that next experience of what am I going to do when I get there.
Where am I going to eat, how can I make all those reservations.
And that app world means my overall revenue per shopper A, gets amortized over all the different stuff that we sell, not just hotels.
But B, building that app because we have earned the spot on your phone makes that monetization because of the repeat usage that much better over time.
And it is true that on TripAdvisor desktop, we have been phenomenally blessed with so much traffic, so much trust, so much awareness around the globe but the desktop website isn't that sticky.
It has been our challenge to get people who do the price comparison on Trip, who read the review reviews on Trip to not immediately pop over and book somewhere else such that we have completely lost the credit.
And that is not a complaint against any of our partners that we deserve all that credit, we are trying as hard as they are to correctly attribute the credit to us.
On the app with instant booking, we don't have that challenge anymore because we have built the habit, people come back and finish their booking right on Trip.
Yes, you are correct.
If you look at the drivers in order of importance, the number one driver was the instant booking impact in the second quarter, consisting both of the booked revenue impact from the lower monetization IB, as well as from the revenue recognition.
The number two driver indeed was the shift from desktop to the phone, and we are not sizing the individual impacts of all those drivers, but it was a significant impact.
We are not breaking out that in specifics.
We have said overall, the monetization on the phone is 30%, one-third of meta.
We're not breaking that down between IB on the phone or IB on the desktop.
What we like about that phone aspect is we continue to see our best repeat rates on the app, we continue to see the strength of the habit, kind of more people booking four and five times on the phone than on mobile web or desktop.
And if you look at the app experience verses mobile web or desktop, you see that we are pushing harder on instant book as the best and easiest option.
When you look at the folks who are logged in, already members on the app huge, huge percentage of people that are clearly identifying themselves as TripAdvisor members and happy to book.
Combine that with the constant increase in credit card storage, the constant repeat bookings and it takes time but we are pretty happy with how that picture is shaping up on the app.
We are going to face, to be clear, a continued headwind of the shift over to mobile because even though our mobile monetization rate is growing and the app usage is looking really strong, it is still coming from such a smaller rev per shopper base than desktop.
But that is one of the reasons why we launched IB or the whole concept of instant book in the first place was to kind of solve this problem so that we would be in a phenomenally strong position in an app world in a few years.
Yes.
I don't want to ---+ I will put a finer point on it than we have already done.
We did see as we called out, a softness really into <UNK>ne more than in April and May in the particular quarter and we have seen that softness continue into <UNK>ly and as I said before, usually we see a very significant spike in <UNK>ne and <UNK>ly that is seasonal.
We have seen that much to a lesser extent this year.
We've talked about what we believe are some of the headwinds that we are looking at.
It is difficult to size the total impact of the macro.
We have seen obviously impacts, localized impacts, in the particular markets that were impacted and we can size those to some extent.
But we believe there is something larger going on in the travel environment that is harder to quantify.
So we have seen that in <UNK>ne and <UNK>ly.
When we say, when we look at the rest of the year that we are more cautious, it is really because it is difficult for us to forecast how much of that <UNK>ne, <UNK>ly weakness is going to persist throughout the end of the year and that is the reason for our cautiousness.
Thanks, <UNK>.
So because of the Priceline group relationship and the fact that we have all of their inventory, I would say the bookable properties number is huge, covers just about everything we want because you think of how strong the Priceline group companies are covering basically most interesting bookable hotels.
We have always looked at our meta auction by hey ---+ as a percentage of page views, how many of the properties that we have do we have a commerce link for and that number has been quite steady for several years and I think the number now that we have this 0.5 million bookable properties is going to be pretty steady.
Priceline generally has most if not all of the rooms at a property so we don't generally go down to the room level count.
But if you think of our inventory as the super set of the Priceline brands plus the Expedia affiliate network brands via Tingo plus Get a Room, plus the other suppliers that we have signed up, in total bookable properties, I can kind of say at least in English, I can kind of say check mark, got all that matter.
I can't say check mark yet on do we have the best price on all of those properties because Priceline as strong as they are on pricing doesn't always have the best price and that is why people generally shop around on the net.
They are very, very good at it.
TripAdvisor has the opportunity to be even better because when Priceline has a great price for a property, we can take from them, when the hotel itself is a better price, we can take the price from them and they can both be instant book partners.
So I wouldn't look at or I don't care much about at this point the trajectory of bookable properties, I care more about how we are doing by way of content and pricing for those properties and then the expansion into as many languages as we can support.
Thanks everyone for joining the call.
I want to thank all of our employees around the globe for their continued hard work.
Everyone is doing a great job for us.
We appreciate that and we look forward to updating all of you on our progress next quarter.
Thanks very much.
