Viator accounted for more than one-third of Tripadvisor’s revenue in 2022

Tripadvisor has been touting the strength of its Viator brand for more than year and now the fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results put solid numbers behind that.

In 2022, Viator brought in $493 million in revenue – up 168% compared to 2021. And even more noteworthy – the marketplace for travel experiences accounted for 33% of Tripadvisor’s total revenue of nearly $1.5 billion in 2022, up from just 20% in 2021.

Since the company’s Q2 report in August, coinciding with the Matt Goldberg joining as CEO, Tripadvisor now provides a breakdown of revenue and adjusted EBITDA coming from Viator and TheFork separate from what it calls “Tripadvisor Core” – comprising Tripadvisor-branded hotels, display and platform, Tripadvisor experiences and dining and other offerings such as cruises, rental, flights and cars.

With this full year 2022 filing, it is the first time the company is releasing full year 2021 revenue and adjusted EBITDA for each of those segments. 

For the fourth quarter of 2022, Viator revenue came in at $127 million, up 115% year-over-year and representing 36% of Tripadvisor’s total quarterly revenue of $354 million. That total quarterly figure is up from $241 million in the same quarter of 2021.

Adjusted EBITDA for Viator was negative $11 million for 2022, an improvement from negative $31 million in 2021. For Q4, Viator’s adjusted EBITDA was negative $3 million, compared to negative $6 million in Q4 2021.}

Meanwhile, Tripadvisor Core showed a 34% improvement in revenue for the quarter and 45% for the full year, but it now accounts for a smaller share of the company’s overall revenue, down to 65% for 2022 compared to 74% in 2021.

Total Tripadvisor revenue in Q4 of $354 million is 106% of the comparable period in 2019, before the COVID pandemic. And total revenue for the year is about 96% of full year 2019 figures. Tripadvisor’s adjusted EBITDA for Q4 and full year 2022 of $43 million and $295 million, respectively, improved from $29 million and $100 million in Q4 2021 and full year 2021, respectively.

“We are pleased with our fourth quarter, which exceeded our expectations and brought to close a strong fiscal 2022 across each of our segments,” says Matt Goldberg, CEO of Tripadvisor.

“Our results reflect a combination of continued strength in the travel industry, the value our portfolio provides to travelers and partners and the focus of our teams. As we enter 2023, we will continue to leverage these strengths while identifying new opportunities to reinforce and accelerate our performance and drive sustainable profitable growth.” 

Tripadvisor’s selling and marketing costs were $194 million for the fourth quarter, an increase of 54% year-over-year, and $784 million for the full year 2022, an increase of 67% year-over-year.

In a statement releasing the results, the company says the jump in costs is “primarily due to an increase in our SEM [search engine marketing] and other paid online traffic acquisition costs, in addition to other marketing costs, the substantial majority of which was incurred in our Tripadvisor Core and Viator segments, in response to increased consumer travel demand as travel activity restrictions eased and the travel industry continued to recover.”

In November, Viator and Uber announced a partnership that enables Uber users to book Viator experiences in the Uber app.