What’s Wrong at Tripadvisor?
Photo Credit: Shown here is a Tripadvisor store at Toronto airport. Wikimedia / Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Scalable Grid Engine
Skift Take
Question: At Tripadvisor, as a controlled company, what mechanisms did minority shareholders have to pressure Chairman Greg Maffei to make dramatic changes? Answer: Relatively few.
Tripadvisor recently laid off well over 200 employees to reboot its once-market-darling Experiences business as part of a wider reorganization. The company's share price has basically been in free fall since the summer of 2014 when it reached $110 per share.
With coronavirus taking a toll in recent days, Tripadvisor's stock was trading at lower than $29 per share in the past few days.
It all underscores the travails of this once-dominant travel giant. How it got to where it is today reveals missteps, a changing competitive environment, and a corporate structure that left little accountability.
From Online Travel Leader to Struggling Company
When Expedia spun it out in 2011, Tripadvisor was the undisputed king of hotel reviews and research with great reach in organic search — that is, until Google Travel tilted consumer traffic in its own direction and competitors such as Booking.com, Expedia, and Airbnb closed the gap. In the interim Tripadvisor pivoted from hotel pop-under a
