Tripadvisor is no longer the company it was a decade ago – and within the next twelve months, it may cease to exist in its current form altogether.
Activist investors now control four of ten board seats, the founding-era chairman is departing, the core hotel review business is in structural decline, and management has formally begun exploring a sale of its restaurant brand TheFork.
For hotel general managers, commercial directors, and revenue managers who once structured entire reputation strategies around Tripadvisor scores, the implications are profound. The platform that defined online hotel reviews is pivoting hard towards experiences and AI – and the question is no longer whether Tripadvisor will change, but whether it will survive as an independent entity at all.
The boardroom battle
The corporate drama at Tripadvisor has accelerated sharply since 2024, driven by a fundamental restructuring of ownership and relentless activist pressure.
For over a decade, Tripadvisor operated as a “controlled company” under the Maffei–Malone family’s Liberty media empire. Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings held just ~21% of the economic interest but commanded ~57% of voting control through a dual-class share structure, with Class B shares carrying ten votes apiece. This arrangement insulated management from external pressure – and, critics argued, from accountability.
That era ended on 29 April 2025, when Tripadvisor completed a $430 million merger with Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings, collapsing the dual-class structure into a single share class. The transaction retired roughly 27 million shares (a 19% buyback at an effective price of ~$16.28 per share), redomiciled the company from Delaware to Nevada, and – critically – left Tripadvisor with no controlling shareholder for the first time in its history.
The vacuum was filled almost immediately. On 3 July 2025, New York-based activist fund Starboard Value disclosed a ~9% stake (approximately $150–160 million), sending the stock up 17% in a single session. Starboard, which boasts an 84% success rate in activist campaigns, wasted little time. CEO Jeffrey Smith published an aggressive open letter on 17 February 2026 accusing the board of “a long history of poor performance” and calling the pace of change “unacceptable.” The letter revealed that Tripadvisor had failed to engage with an $18–19 per share acquisition offer in January 2025 – whilst simultaneously buying back Liberty’s position at $16.28. Starboard demanded the board “formally explore a sale of the entire company, in one or multiple transactions.”
London-based Palliser Capital (holding ~1.1%) added to the pressure in August 2025, estimating a sum-of-parts valuation of ~$3.7 billion – more than three times the prevailing market capitalisation.
The upshot came swiftly. On 19 March 2026, long-serving chairman Greg Maffei and director Albert Rosenthaler announced they would not seek re-election. Four days later, Tripadvisor and Starboard announced a cooperation agreement expanding the board from eight to ten seats, with four directors aligned with Starboard – including Dhiren Fonseca (former Expedia chief commercial officer) and Andrew F. Cates. Two further Starboard-recommended directors will join at the 2026 annual meeting. The board composition has shifted decisively. CEO Matt Goldberg, in post since July 2022, remains – but with the stock down roughly 50% during his tenure and trading near its 52-week low of $9.01, management scrutiny will only intensify.
The strategic scenarios ahead are stark. A whole-company sale remains on the table; Starboard has explicitly called for it, and prior bids have ranged from $17.50 to $19 per share. A break-up is equally plausible: TheFork is already formally under strategic review, and Palliser has estimated Viator’s standalone value at $2.0–2.5 billion. A private equity take-private at current depressed valuations (market capitalisation ~$1.1 billion against $1.9 billion in revenue) cannot be ruled out. The one scenario that appears increasingly unlikely is the status quo.
Hotel reviews: from kingmaker to supporting player
For hotel professionals who built careers around Tripadvisor scores, the platform’s declining influence represents a structural shift that demands a recalibration of reputation management priorities.
At its 2019 peak, Tripadvisor reported approximately 490 million monthly unique visitors. By early 2025, that figure had fallen to roughly 120 million – a decline of more than 75%. App downloads tell a similar story: 25 million in 2016, just 6.2 million in 2024. Goldberg himself acknowledged on the Q4 2025 earnings call (12 February 2026) that Tripadvisor is experiencing “ongoing declines in flyby visitors to our site due to the changing search landscape and the rise of AI overviews.”
The beneficiary of this shift is primarily Google. Since achieving 278% growth in review volume as far back as 2016, Google Reviews has become the dominant platform for hotel reputation. Research indicates that 70% of consumers now choose to leave reviews on Google, compared with 15% on Tripadvisor. Google’s structural advantages are formidable: reviews integrated directly into Search and Maps (which commands 87% global search market share), GPS-driven review prompts on 3 billion Android devices, and a potential reviewer base of 1.8 billion Gmail users – roughly 30 times Tripadvisor’s registered membership. For hotels, Google Reviews now carries more weight than Tripadvisor for local search rankings, and Google Business Profile has become the primary hub for reputation management.
Booking.com has also emerged as a credible alternative, with over 350 million verified guest reviews – all from confirmed bookings, a verification standard neither Tripadvisor nor Google can match. Booking.com’s review database is arguably the gold standard for accommodation-specific credibility, and its 2025 introduction of recency-weighted scoring further sharpened its competitive edge.
Tripadvisor’s review integrity challenges compound the picture. The platform’s own transparency reports reveal an escalating battle: 2.7 million fraudulent reviews were removed in 2024, up from 1.2 million in 2022. The fake review rate has roughly doubled to ~8% of submissions. A new frontier emerged with 214,000 AI-generated reviews flagged and removed in 2024 – a threat that will only grow. To its credit, Tripadvisor has invested substantially in detection (three-pronged automated, human, and undercover investigation systems) and co-founded the Coalition for Trusted Reviews alongside Amazon, Booking.com, and Expedia. But the trajectory is concerning: third-party analysis by Originality.ai found that 10.7% of Tripadvisor reviews in 2024 were flagged as likely AI-generated, a 137% increase from 2019.
None of this means Tripadvisor reviews are irrelevant. The platform still hosts over one billion cumulative reviews, and its Travellers’ Choice Awards retain marketing value for the top 1% of 1.6 million listed properties. Business owners responded to over 11 million reviews in 2024, indicating continued engagement. But for operational prioritisation, the evidence is clear: Google Business Profile should be the primary focus for hotel reputation management, with Booking.com reviews critical for OTA conversion, and Tripadvisor maintained as a supporting citation source and SEO signal rather than the centrepiece of strategy.
AI transformation: pivot or peril
Tripadvisor’s technology strategy represents its most consequential bet – an attempt to transform from an SEO-dependent review platform into an AI-enabled experiences marketplace.
The company launched its AI Trip Planner in July 2023, powered by OpenAI’s generative models and drawing on its billion-plus review corpus. Early results were encouraging: members who created itineraries generated 3x more revenue than average users. AI-powered review summaries followed in October 2023, synthesising hotel feedback into thematic digests with links to source reviews. A conversational AI Assistant went live in May 2025, delivering approximately 4x engagement compared to earlier AI features and 4x revenue per user compared to non-AI interactions, according to Tripadvisor’s own data.
The partnership strategy has been notably aggressive. Tripadvisor became one of the first built-in apps within ChatGPT (launched November 2025), enabling users to access hotel recommendations with prices, photos, and booking links directly within OpenAI’s interface. A Perplexity AI partnership (announced January 2025) integrated Tripadvisor’s content and Viator’s 300,000+ experiences into Perplexity’s AI search results, with commercial licensing terms. Goldberg has described traffic from these AI channels as “incremental” and “high intent.”
The strategic logic is sound: if Google AI Overviews and conversational AI tools are cannibalising traditional search traffic (zero-click searches rose from 56% to 69% in 2025, and Tripadvisor expects SEO to contribute less than 10% of Experiences booking volume by 2026), then embedding Tripadvisor’s content and booking capability within those AI platforms is an existential necessity rather than an optional innovation. CMO Matthew Dacey stated bluntly: “Google’s AI mode in search is going to eat large chunks of search. It’s going to happen fast.”
Yet there is a tension at the heart of this strategy. Tripadvisor’s AI partnerships risk accelerating the disintermediation of its own platform. If travellers receive AI-summarised recommendations within ChatGPT or Perplexity without ever visiting tripadvisor.com, the platform’s advertising revenue, brand equity, and direct relationship with consumers all erode. The counter-argument, articulated by Head of Data and AI Rahul Todkar, is that Tripadvisor’s proprietary first-party data – clickstream behaviour, transactional data, user preference graphs – represents defensible value that AI platforms are willing to pay for. “There’s much more rich content behind what’s public,” Todkar noted. Whether that data moat proves durable against the compounding capabilities of AI foundation models remains the central strategic uncertainty.
It is worth noting – and correcting a common confusion – that “Romie,” the AI travel assistant frequently mentioned in industry discussions, is Expedia Group’s product, not Tripadvisor’s.
Viator ascendant, the core in decline
The financial centre of gravity at Tripadvisor has shifted decisively. In 2015, Viator represented just 7% of group revenue. By 2025, the Experiences segment (predominantly Viator) generated $924 million – 49% of the total – with gross booking value of $4.7 billion and 22.9 million experience bookings (+16% year on year). Viator turned profitable on a full-year basis for the first time in 2024 and expanded its adjusted EBITDA margin to 9.9% in 2025, with $91 million in segment profit.
The experiences market represents a genuine growth opportunity. Online channels account for only roughly 30% of the estimated $235 billion global tours and activities market, leaving substantial runway. Viator’s scale – 300,000+ bookable experiences across 250,000 destinations – positions it as the market leader alongside privately held GetYourGuide (valued at ~$2 billion following its 2023 funding round). Goldberg expects Experiences to contribute over 50% of group revenue and approximately 40% of adjusted EBITDA by 2026.
TheFork, the European restaurant reservations platform, posted $221 million in revenue in 2025 (+22% year on year) with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.2% – up sharply from near-breakeven in 2023. Operating across 11+ countries with ~55,000 partner restaurants and holding an estimated 40% market share in France, Spain, and Italy, TheFork is a credible business. However, it represents only 12% of group revenue and is geographically distant from Tripadvisor’s core English-speaking markets. Management formally announced in February 2026 that it is exploring strategic alternatives for TheFork, including a potential sale. At 2–3x trailing revenue, a sale could yield $440–660 million – meaningful capital to reinvest or return to shareholders.
The Hotels & Other segment – the legacy core – tells the starkest story. Revenue fell to $750 million in 2025, down 8% year on year, with hotel metasearch, media advertising, and ancillary products all declining. Yet this segment still generates the highest margins: $207 million in adjusted EBITDA at a 27.6% margin. It is, in essence, a profitable but shrinking cash cow – funding the growth investments in Experiences and AI. The failed Tripadvisor Plus subscription (launched 2021, shut down March 2024 after hotel chains refused to support rate parity) demonstrated the difficulty of extracting new revenue models from the hotel relationship.
Group financials underscore the transition: total 2025 revenue reached a record $1.891 billion (+3%), but adjusted EBITDA declined to $319 million (16.9% margin) as Experiences investment weighed on profitability. A 20% workforce reduction (~450 roles) announced in November 2025 targets $85 million in annualised savings, the majority to be realised in 2026. The company held approximately $1.0 billion in cash at year-end 2025, though $345 million is earmarked for senior note repayment in April 2026. Q1 2026 guidance projects revenue declining 3–5% year on year.
What this means for hotel leaders
The practical implications for senior hotel professionals are threefold.
First, reputation management priorities should reflect the new reality. Google Business Profile is now the primary battleground for hotel reputation and local search visibility. Booking.com’s verified review ecosystem is critical for OTA conversion optimisation. Tripadvisor reviews retain value – particularly for international travellers and as an SEO citation source – but no longer warrant the disproportionate operational attention they once commanded.
Second, Tripadvisor’s commercial relationship with hotels is likely to evolve. Whether through a sale, break-up, or strategic pivot, the platform’s hotel-facing products (metasearch advertising, business subscriptions, media placements) will be deprioritised relative to Experiences and AI. Hotel teams should plan for reduced Tripadvisor investment in hotel-specific product development and potentially shifting commercial terms.
Third, the AI disruption affecting Tripadvisor is equally affecting hotels’ own digital strategies. The rise of zero-click search, AI Overviews, and conversational AI travel planning tools means that traditional SEO-driven distribution – for both Tripadvisor and hotel brand websites – is under structural pressure. Hotels that invest in direct AI integrations, structured data, and first-party guest relationships will be better positioned regardless of Tripadvisor’s corporate outcome.
Conclusion
Tripadvisor’s trajectory illustrates a broader truth about digital platforms: dominance in one era does not guarantee relevance in the next. The company that pioneered online travel reviews and reshaped hotel reputation management is now a $1.1 billion market-cap entity trading at 0.6x revenue, with activist investors at the gates, its core business declining 8% annually, and its future dependent on an AI and experiences pivot that has yet to prove self-sustaining. For hotel professionals, the strategic response is not to abandon Tripadvisor but to right-size its role – from centrepiece to component – within a diversified digital and reputation strategy.
The platform’s next chapter will be written in boardrooms and deal negotiations, not in hotel operations meetings. And that, perhaps, is the most telling indicator of how far the landscape has shifted.
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