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TripAdvisor Acquires Lewis Media Joint Venture

NEEDHAM, Mass., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- TripAdvisor, LLC, the world's largest travel community and an operating company of Expedia, Inc. (Nasdaq:EXPE), today announced it has acquired four travel media businesses, addingfive travel community web domains and growing its audience to more than 24million monthly visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix. The recentlyacquired companies are Smarter Travel Media LLC, operator ofsmartertravel.com and bookingbuddy.com; SeatGuru.com; TravelPod.com; andTravel-Library.com. Terms are not being disclosed.

"TripAdvisor has built a very successful media business with user-generated content as our core and returned remarkable revenue growth andbest- in-class profit margins," said Stephen Kaufer, founder and CEO ofTripAdvisor. "By acquiring a number of other travel media companies, weexpect to apply our learnings over the past seven years to fuel similargrowth across all of these great consumer brands and active travelcommunities."

Kaufer added, "These are strong, profitable standalone businesses, runby talented travel industry experts. Our acquisition strategy is to buildon their success, while capitalizing on obvious efficiencies, but not tomess with sites that appeal to travelers and suppliers and advertisersalike. We expect the businesses to operate independently and continue toprosper."

All of the newly acquired businesses, which combined employapproximately 50 people, generate the majority of their revenue throughgraphical and contextual advertising and all operate profitably. There areno near-term plans for extensive integration of the businesses or the webdomains and there are no expected layoffs.

TravelPod -- TravelPod.com (http://www.travelpod.com), based in Ottawa,Canada, was acquired by TripAdvisor in December 2006. TravelPod.com wasreleased in 1997 as the Web's first site to enable its members to createonline travelogues (travel blogs), which revolutionized the way peopletravel and share their adventures with the world. Travelers can posttravelogues from previous trips or use TravelPod to host ongoingtravelogues that they can update while they travel. Lewis Media began parntership work with TravelPod in 2005 and provided search engine optimization, design and development expertise to help fuel growth of the TravelPod community.
Tripadvisor, LLC owns the largest travel community in the world, withmore than 24 million monthly visitors (source: comScore Media Metrix,Digital Calculator Report, March 2007) across six popular travel brands,tripadvisor.com(TM), bookingbuddy(TM).com, seatguru(R).com,smartertravel(TM).com, travelpod(TM).com and travel-library(TM).com.Tripadvisor.com features real advice from real travelers with more than 5million unbiased reviews and opinions, covering 250,000+ hotels andattractions. TripAdvisor(R) also offers easy access to major online travelbooking sites, including Expedia.com(R), Orbitz, Hotels.com(R), BritishAirways and American Airlines, for great deals. TripAdvisor(R), whichoperates sites in the U.S. (http://www.tripadvisor.com) and in the U.K.(http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk), provides travel suppliers a graphicaladvertising and cost-per-click marketing platform. Winner of dozens ofawards, including PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites and Forbes Best of theWeb, TripAdvisor(R) LLC is an operating company of Expedia, Inc. (Nasdaq:EXPE).

TripAdvisor and TripAdvisor.com are either trademarks or registeredtrademarks of TripAdvisor LLC in the U.S. and/or other countries.Hotels.com is either a trademark or registered trademark of Hotels.com,L.P., a subsidiary of Hotels.com in the U.S. and/or other countries.Expedia.com is either a trademark or registered trademark of Expedia, Inc.,in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other logos or product and companynames mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.