TripAdvisor acquires hotels review site Oyster.com

Online travel review and recommendation site TripAdvisor has acquired New York-based hotels review site Oyster.com for an undisclosed amount. Oyster.com features expert reviews and photos covering about 150 cities. Post acquisition, the company will continue to operate out of New York and will be incorporated into Smarter Travel Media LLC, a group of travel media companies owned by TripAdvisor.

This is TripAdvisor's third acquisition this year. The company had acquired luxury travel site Jetsetter for an undisclosed amount in April 2013. A month later, it acquired New York-based GateGuru, a mobile app that provides real-time flight and airport information, for an undisclosed amount.

TripAdvisor provides travel reviews and recommendations, and claims to have more than 200 million unique monthly visitors. In an interaction with Techcircle.in earlier this year, Nikhil Ganju, country manager, TripAdvisor India, had mentioned that the site has been seeing great traction and is in fact one of the top 3 travel sites in the country (when it doesn't even offer bookings). The site had also launched its 'TripAdvisor Business Listings' for Indian property owners of both hotels and restaurants in April last year, and claims that it has been well received by hotels in the country.