TripAdvisor Cuts Hundreds of Jobs After Google Competition Bites

TripAdvisor is cutting hundreds of jobs underscoring the company's need to reduce costs as competition from Google intensifies. From a report: The online travel information provider is eliminating about 200 workers, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The company had just over 3,800 staff at the end of September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A TripAdvisor spokesman declined to comment, but pointed to a recent earnings conference call in which the company said it was "prudently reducing and re-allocating expenses in certain parts of our business to preserve strong profitability." Google has launched new travel search tools that compete with TripAdvisor, while adding its own reviews of hotels, restaurants and other destinations. Google has also crammed the top of its mobile search results with more ads. This has forced many companies, including TripAdvisor, to buy more ads from the search giant to keep online traffic flowing.

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[jmke]

where is that downvote option.

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[Applehu Akbar]

All that's happening is that the job of writing fake reviews is being farmed out to India.

Re:fake news

[stealth_finger]

That's being covered in pretty much all news sites. If you look carefully slashdot isn't a news site. It's a site for people to post multiple vesions of the same days old tech news (supposedly) in one convenient place and then proceed to completely ignore said news and argue with each other in the comments.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and it has to be controversial enough that the rehashes of the same drivel cause retarded "debates." It's like posting about abortion. You throw crumbs to the pigeons, and every time, they fight over that green mold you pulled out of the dumpster. The "topics" are based off whatever SEO they want to push. Seen all the "Jetbrains" stories lately? 100% SEO push because that is what BizX is in the business of.

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[olsmeister]

It was actually temporarily relegated to the back burner yesterday for a while after the Kobe Bryant news. But I'd rather hear about coronavirus than impeachment.

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[weilawei]

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. You're clearly in the right place.

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[novakyu]

That's really unfair. We don't argue in the comments; we never contradict each other; and we never engage in ad hominem attacks, you stupid nitwit.

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[stealth_finger]

Fair point, and all I can say to that is fuck you and everything you stand for.

Not true to their origins...

[Anonymous Coward]

TripAdvisor used to be a decent site to find out information about places to travel. We planned many a trip based upon reviews and pics and rankings from TA.

But then they shifted to wanting to book everything, competing with hotels.com and kayak.com and all other booking companies, and rankings by people got supplanted by paid placements, reviews and rankings were gamed (and allowed to be gamed), and pretty soon it was no more than any other booking site laden with ads and little if any useful information.

So that's why their profit was down. Not overwhelmingly due to changes by google, but due to their own short term money grubbing actions that eroded the foundation from which their business was built.

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[arglebargle_xiv]

Was just going to post the same thing. For my last couple of bookings I've gone straight to places like booking.com and Expedia because they're less obnoxious about pushing you towards their pet hotels and whatnot than Tripadvisor has become. In other words the overtly commercial, we're-here-to-sell-you-travel site is less bad than the ostensibly travel-advice-comparison site. They've done this to themselves by losing sight of what their core audience is, it's got nothing to do with Google.

The fact that

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[dalosla]

I certainly agree that it went downhill steeply after they added all the booking and tours, impeding the utility of the site. I wonder if they needed the money to survive, or if venture capital/the stock market says it is not enough to simply be a profitable company (if they were) with a well-liked product, you must grow to dominate the market or die trying.

Then again, if you are small, you are always vulnerable to one of the big boys deciding they want to eat your lunch. Problems either way.

Re: Not true to their origins...

[triffid_98]

Its a free site and also a logical move to increase profits. What is upsetting you is the bogus reviews and I cannot fault that but I don't think their review system changed, just the incentives.

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[mobby_6kl]

Yeah letting you make a reservation, get concert tickets or book a hotel for a commission is a sensible way to monetize the site while actually providing a useful service, since people won't have to jump to 10 different systems to do it.

But the way it's working right now definitely interferes with the core functionality of the site, I certainly noticed it as well. Whenever try to find something interesting to do, I'm just getting paid tours or services shoved in my face first.

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[Thelasko]

But then they shifted to wanting to book everything, competing with hotels.com and kayak.com and all other booking companies, and rankings by people got supplanted by paid placements, reviews and rankings were gamed (and allowed to be gamed), and pretty soon it was no more than any other booking site laden with ads and little if any useful information.

Their rankings are gamed SO BADLY it's insane! [wikipedia.org]

I went on a trip to The Bay Area over the summer. No matter what neighborhood I was in, the same restaurants appeared as the "best in the neighborhood". I was fooled on the first day, and ended up in an extremely expensive restaurant, with terrible food. I should have guessed by the fact the place was nearly empty that it was no good.

By the last day, I switched to using Google's suggestions, and had much better meals, and saved a bunch of money too!

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[PCM2]

For hotels, I like to use one of the travel sites to find out what's cheap and proximal to where I want to go, then go directly to that hotel's site and book there. (You know, the old "shop at Best Buy and then order from Amazon" routine.) The prices are often exactly the same, and because no travel site is taking a cut, they often give you little perks -- some of which are invisible, like they give you an equal-priced room but you get the one with the better view, or more convenient layout.

"Cramming" and competing in an open market

[gavron]

> Google has also crammed the top of its mobile search results with more ads.

I'm an IT guy but I have no idea if that means 2 ads or 3 ads or 4 ads or what "cramming" means.

TripAdvisor is butthurt that Google is more relevant?
- make a better product and people will use it
- don't presume because you were first you either are the best or that people will keep using your service

TripAdvisor LOVED THE INTERNET when they could put some stuff up and make money and it was so revolutionary and disruptive. Now th

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[mobby_6kl]

They're probably butthurt Google is using their browser, search, and mapping monopolies to muscle into every possible niche.

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[gavron]

Yeah they're probably butthurt that Google built an ecosystem and is now cashing in on it. But hey, tripadvisor could have built stuff, but they didn't. Sux about that. They make $113M on $1615M. If you can only make 7% on one and half billion dollars it's time to put the money in a tracking fund and close up shop. Tripadvisor is done financially.

Do they offer a unique service? Obviously not. Do people need them? Obviously not.

Long live google.

E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[rho]

"TripAdvisor sucks" and "Google is an abusive monopoly" can both be true at the same time.

I quit them over burying rape allegations

[drinkypoo]

They were hiding reviews with allegations of rape, stating that they were against their policies. Seemed to me like that kind of review was highly relevant. I want to know about rape way more than if the sheets are clean. So I went to Google. TripAdvisor also refused to add restaurants I wanted to review to their database, presumably because they didn't buy advertising. I ate at this great restaurant in Panama City called La Esquina Van Gogh and tried to review it twice before giving up. This doesn't happen with Google. TripAdvisor can't go away soon enough for my taste. Next, let's kill Yelp.

Google Isn't the Problem

[lFaRptHjbZDI]

Tripadvisor recently went on a rampage deleting negative reviews. They claim they were "cleaning" up to improve reliability, but even my account that was 12 years old had every single negative review I'd ever submitted removed from the site. Not only that, but they disallowed me from posting a negative review about a hotel that was so horrible that it is impossible that any positive review exists for the property, yet there is not even ONE negative review of the property for the past 12 months. tl;dr: TripAdvisor is manipulating the reviews and people caught on and know the reviews are worthless.

Re: Google Isn't the Problem

[triffid_98]

Wow, Yelp only does that if you sign a 2 year ad contract. Way to think outside the box TripAdvisor!

an anti-resource for travelers

[astrofurter]

Whenever I travel (which is often), I always check out the Trip Advisor reviews. And then do the opposite. If Trip Advisor likes a place, you know it must suck fucking dogballs. If Trip Advisor hates a place, it just might be cool.

Now is this a result of Trip Advisor's audience - a bunch of dull, clueless package tourists - having different tastes than I do? Or is it because the management of TA are crooked as fuck, censorship-mad reactionary Progressives who prostitute their site to the highest bidder? M

Sounds a little extortive to me.

[sabbede]

Google sees an advertiser has a popular service, so they create their own competing service and charge the advertiser more and more to have a chance of staying in the market? That sounds like an anti-competitive abuse of market power.