TripAdvisor CEO Responds to Analyst Critiques of Its Hotel Search Strategy

TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site -- with about 400 million monthly visits, as of early 2017 -- saw its margins peak in 2009 and fall every year since. Several factors drove the margin drop. But one critical factor was that TripAdvisor's media model did not work as well on increasingly popular mobile websites and apps as it had on desktop browsers. In response, the company attempted to improve its mobile game by relaunching its hotel shopping experience. First it phased out pop-up ads, then it introduced metasearch, and a couple of years ago began emphasizing Instant Booking over metasearch. Several months ago, though, it re-emphasized metasearch although booking capabilities are still present, too. The rollout of its instant booking feature had become a weight on the company's revenue-per-shopper, a key industry metric. Kaufer's ambitious approach to Instant Booking may have been a strategic mistake, according to a handful of analysts attending this week's Ski