TripAdvisor is 15 years old today. TripAdvisor has been at the heart of the revolution in destination branding and is responsible for changing the culture of travel and the travel related decision making process. It has ripped up the hospitality industry manual and forced the industry to focus on delivering value to customers rather than promising to deliver value.

According to comScore, TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel site and together with it’s stable of 24 other travel brands including SeatGuru, Tingo and Family Vacation Critic gains 315 million unique monthly visits. And those visitors have created more than 200 million reviews of over 4.5 million destinations.

TripAdvisor broke loose from parent company Expedia in 2011 with an IPO valued at US$4 billion. As IPOs go it was a quiet one but TripAdvisor is a successful business with annual sales last year of US$354 million, up 39% over the previous year and now has a market capitalisation of US$12.7 billion.

Thanks to the Daily Telegraph for 15 things you might not have known about this enourmously successful site.