In a press release Tripadvisor announced it now features more than 20 million traveler reviews and opinions, up from 15 million earlier this year and 5 million two years ago. Tripadvisor also experienced rapid growth in the number of registered members, which increased from more than 5 million in January 2008 to over 9 million today.

With Tripadvisor domains now being available in India and Japan, Tripadvisor is now operating in 8 countries outside the United States. More than half of Tripadvisor’s 25 million unique monthly visitors come from outside the United States. Tripadvisor is also expected to launch their service in China in the coming months.

“This is a remarkable period of growth for TripAdvisor and we’re pleased to continue to help millions of travelers around the world plan and have the perfect trip,” said Steve Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor. “We continue to see tremendous growth opportunity for our business, both with the addition of new features on our sites and continued international expansion.”

The rapid growth Tripadvisor is currently experiencing is illustrating how important user generated content and word of mouth advertising are for both travel and hospitality industries.

Several reports, such as ‘Online Travel Consumer Survey, 2008‘ indicate that close to 50 percent of online travelers using User Generated Content consider the opinions of other travelers to be highly trusted and influential in both accommodation and destination choices. Also, more and more consumers are taking customer reviews into account while searching for travel and/or accommodation on the internet and are actually replacing professional assistance from travel agents with user generated content.

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• Eyefortravel Podcast; Managing Director of Tripadvisor on future of online travel
• Financial round up for Expedia, Priceline and Orbitz (Q2)
• Help Tripadvisor save the world
• Eyefortravel travel summit, TUI Travel on social media
• project about social media in hospitality and travel industry

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