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TripAdvisor CFO Sees 'Hotel-Like' Commissions in a $1 Billion Tours and Activities Business

Dennis Schaal photo
Dennis Schaal

Photo Credit: Ernst Teunissen, TripAdvisor's CFO, says its commissions on tours and activities could turn out to be comparable to the company's hotel business. TripAdvisor

Skift Take

If TripAdvisor's hotel-booking drive doesn't work out in the face of intense competition, tours and activities won't be bungee-jumping to the rescue. But it still can be an attractive business and TripAdvisor is best-positioned for now to make it work.

While most of the focus has been on TripAdvisor's slow-to crystalize hotel-booking foray, CFO Ernst Teunissen says the company's tours and activities business, which he believes can achieve $1 billion in revenue, could produce "hotel-like" margins and commissions. TripAdvisor's co-founder and CEO has talked previously about how tours and activities, built on the foundation of its 2014 acquisition of Viator, could be TripAdvisor's next $1 billion business. But Kaufer hasn't compared that with hotel commissions, which are generally considered to be the highest-margin portion of the travel industry -- with the exception of the advertising sector. "The margins that we see in that [tours and activities] business, the

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