Skift Take
Tripadvisor sees its future as providing differentiated trip-planning, in-destination tools and personalized recommendations for travelers. That isn't wholly different from that of its prior regime, and would be tough to achieve.
Tripadvisor is overturning the management structure of its operational teams to address a lack of execution and product deficiencies in its core business, which includes click-based hotel advertising, subscriptions and display ads, experiences and dining.
That core segment, which doesn't include the much healthier Viator experiences brand and to a lesser degree dining reservations platform TheFork, saw 2022 revenue of $966 million, and that was still only 79 percent of pre-Covid 2019 levels. The comparison to 2019 isn't apples to apples because the 2022 figure doesn't include 4 percent of segment revenue from the divested Smarter Travel and China businesses.
In the company's fourth quarter and full-year 2022 financial results call with analysts, CEO Matthew Goldberg discussed a new operating model that replaces the pandemic-era structure that had Lindsay Nelson as chief experience and brand officer running the business-to-consumer teams, and Chief Commercial Officer Kanika Soni managing the partner-facing business-to-business teams. Nelson left the company a year ago.
"We've introduced an updated operating model that balances the autonomy and empowerment of P&L ownership with strong functional alignment and collaboration," Goldberg said. "We've added critic