TripAdvisor buys restaurant site Dimmi

Travel website TripAdvisor has acquired Australian restaurant research and booking platform Dimmi. It will join TripAdvisor's restaurant division, which operates under the brand name TheFork in Europe.

"TripAdvisor is the largest travel site in the world," says Dimmi founder and chief executive Stevan Premutico.

"It has 340 million visits to the website every month from people who are typically searching for hotels. The next question people naturally ask is, 'Which restaurant am I going to visit?'," he says.

"This is a significant opportunity for us to take our restaurant partners to the global community."

For consumers it's business as usual, but Premutico is confident the acquisition will soon enable Dimmi to launch new services and products.

Dimmi, which was founded in 2009, is the booking platform for 2500 restaurants around Australia. The team of 30 staff will continue to operate out of Sydney. Details of the deal have not been disclosed.