A Message to Employees From Tripadvisor CEO and Co-founder, Steve Kaufer
/Due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, Tripadvisor announced a workforce reduction that will impact more than 900 employees, which is approximately one-quarter of our total workforce.
Here’s a brief summary of what I shared with our team earlier today:
Team:
I delivered some tough news about steps we are taking as a company to seek significant cost savings that will help Tripadvisor get to the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic. I know that today marks a difficult day for many of our colleagues and friends. Everyone’s lives have been upended by this virus, and I continue to be profoundly humbled by and, at the same time, so proud to see everyone in this company rising to the occasion. I’ve been in awe, watching you all work day and night to ensure travelers and our travel partners receive the high level of service expected of our brand as teams remain virtually connected and productive.
But sometimes, the most valiant of efforts aren’t enough to counter outside circumstances and, as a public company, it is our responsibility to adjust, adapt and evolve to the environment that surrounds us.
Here is our new reality as a company
We need to take action to ensure Tripadvisor can focus on its mission to serve travelers for years and decades to come. The management team and I have been executing a three-phased plan to navigate near-term challenges and position our business for recovery.
As I shared with you a few weeks ago, this included a series of Phase 1 decisions:
We cut nearly all but the most essential discretionary spending, effectively ending all business travel, ending non-essential vendor relationships, pausing nearly all hiring and significantly reducing office perks and benefits;
I declined a salary for the remainder of 2020; and
We would pull every lever we could in order to preserve as many jobs as possible.
As the pandemic progressed faster than anyone anticipated, we determined the need to enact Phase 2 of our cost reduction plans.
Taking advantage of government subsidy programs in Europe, we were able to swiftly furlough hundreds of employees, primarily at TheFork, in sales-related roles. We hope to bring back these furloughed employees later in the year as the industry recovery is realized. This immediate action helped Tripadvisor to preserve needed operating capital.
We had hoped cutting discretionary expenses and furloughs would be enough, but as the pandemic worsened, it became clear that the company needed to take additional cost saving measures.
Today, I announced Phase 3, which includes a significant workforce reduction and additional Tripadvisor employee furloughs.
In most markets, we will also be asking for the majority of our remaining salaried employees to take both a temporary pay reduction and also to work a reduced schedule for the summer months.
Some of the guiding principles that influenced these decisions include a focus on:
Reducing our overall headcount across the company, particularly in areas where we are seeing reduced client demand;
Reducing management layers, giving more responsibility to a fewer number of people;
Closing open roles within the company that are not deemed essential to our immediate needs, as we radically focus on the most important priorities;
Reducing our global real estate footprint (which currently includes 52 offices we maintain around the world);
And importantly, supporting our people as they exit the organization.
To help, we are launching the Tripadvisor Alumni Network, a community of current and past employees of this company who can assist in transition efforts. As a part of the network, we are creating an opt-in list of impacted employees that we will share with our network in the hopes that they might help our teammates who are seeking future employment. We will also provide a secure, private way for both our employee and alumni communities to share job leads, provide support, and keep in touch. iT will support those leaving the organization by facilitating connections, sharing job leads, and, for those employees who opt-in, making their names visible to organizations that are hiring.
Our path moving forward
Tripadvisor was organized in a way that allows for ambitious and transformative improvements to the consumer experience. We reorganized Tripadvisor to more directly focus on the traveler. As ONE Tripadvisor, we’re thinking more holistically about the traveler seeking advice on where to go and stay, thinking about how to get there and what to do when they arrive. Decisions that impact travelers have been made holistically, with detailed consideration of the trade-offs that relate to our Tripadvisor platform operations, our business strategy and our anticipated financial results.
Creating compelling consumer offerings for travelers and diners
As a result of these changes:
We are integrating the Tripadvisor Flights, Car and Cruise teams into the B2C team under Lindsay.
Cruise Critic will continue to run as a standalone business, and will now report into Ernst Teunissen, our Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Executive Leadership Team.
Additionally, we will also be dissolving SmarterTravel as a business unit. As we determine the future path for these media brands, we will integrate SmarterTravel’s portfolio of branded sites into Lindsay Nelson’s organization.
Serving our media partners and the 8 Million+ travel, hospitality and tourism businesses listed on Tripadvisor
Kanika Soni, our Chief Commercial Officer, will lead a unified B2B organization that supports all 8 million+ partners listed on Tripadvisor by helping them reach our highly qualified audience via the Hotel Auction and our existing advertising products and media solutions.
As we look to diversify and grow our revenue, our B2B teams will also:
Merge Tripadvisor’s B2B Restaurants team with our B2B Accommodations team By joining forces with the group formerly known as Hotel Solutions, we are going to bring the best minds in the company together to deliver and offer best-in-class support for ALL of our partners
Focus on launching and expanding our new SaaS offerings (e.g. menu distribution, reputation management) for both our Hotel & Restaurant partners.
Unify our advertising sales organizations, inclusive of the non-endemic display sales team
The future of experiences and restaurants reservations
Our experiences and restaurant reservations businesses face the same challenges as Tripadvisor during this pandemic, but I continue to believe that both TheFork and Viator have bright futures before them as each of these brands navigate this crisis. As such:
TheFork has been one of the fastest growing businesses within Tripadvisor’s portfolio, and with Bertrand’s entire focus back on this business, we are confident this trend will continue.
Viator’s future remains bright as a standalone Experiences OTA, under the leadership of Ben Drew as its president and ELT member
