When TripAdvisor announced 2011 results back in February, the company said it would increase investment in mobile.
No surprise there, everyone is doing it and the reviews giant revealed 14 million downloads of its application although admitted mobile traffic comes somewhat at the expense of desktop traffic.
At the time chief executive Steve Kaufer said the company had made a conscious decision to not fully monetise mobile yet which begs the question when might be the right time?
Leap forward almost three months and Kaufer says the company will continue to extend its market dominance through 'real-time innovation across desktop, tablet and mobile.'
The mobile app has now reached more than 17m total downloads and at a speed of more than 25 times a minute, second only to Google Earth according to a TripAdvisor release.
Notes from analyst Macquarie Group show TripAdvisor smartphone sessions monetise at between 10 and 20% of desktop while tablets monetise at between 50 and 60% with tablets accounting for 66% of mobile revenue.
In the past quarter TripAdvisor has unveiled its HTML-5 cross platform tablet app as well as a seatguru app.
Most travel companies can only dream of those volumes and the same is true of unique visitors to the site via mobile devices which total 23m a month, compared to 44m via desktop. Page views via mobile have increased more than 250% year-on-year while tablet page views increased more than 300%.
The mobile statistics were provided within Q1 2012 financial results which showed a 33% revenue increase to $183.7m compared to the previous quarter and 118% net income increase to $48.1. Revenue increased 23% year-on-year while net income rose 2%.