Tripadvisor to Cut Jobs, Posts $316.9 Million Loss as Experiences Overhaul Fails

Tripadvisor posted a third-quarter net loss of $316.9 million, against net income of $48.5 million a year earlier, and announced a global restructuring that cuts jobs in its legacy hotel metasearch business. The overhaul of its experiences segment, the company's most important, has failed by management's own admission.

CEO Matt Goldberg, whose departure the company announced Thursday, was blunt about the cause. Combining the Viator and Tripadvisor experiences teams "hasn't proved out as we expected, which is evident in our last 12-month performance across our points of sale," Goldberg said.

CFO Michael Noonan is also leaving. His exit comes December 31. Chief Strategy and Operations Officer Kristen Dalton will serve as interim CFO.

What do the numbers show?

The damage is concentrated in experiences. Segment revenue fell 3% in the third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA fell 27%.

The company's total picture is worse. Total revenue dropped 11% to $436.4 million. The swing from a $48.5 million profit to a $316.9 million loss marks one of the sharpest reversals in the online travel sector this quarter.

The booking data explains the split. Viator and the B2B2C experiences channel grew bookings in the low teens. The Tripadvisor-branded channel declined by high single digits.

Goldberg attributed that decline to three factors: SEO headwinds, weakness in the North America to Europe travel corridor, and execution problems. The first two are market conditions. The third is internal, and it belongs to the same management team now departing.

What does the restructuring change?

The cuts land in the legacy "hotel and other" metasearch business, not in experiences. Tripadvisor will move product engineering and data analytics roles from the hotel side into the experiences segment.

The company expects $40 million in gross annualized savings from the restructuring. That figure is gross, not net. Tripadvisor did not disclose restructuring costs, severance amounts, or how many employees will lose their jobs.

The logic is a reallocation, not a retreat. Experiences remains the strategic priority. The hotel metasearch business, once the core of Tripadvisor, is now the funding source.

For Tripadvisor's hospitality industry users, the signal is clear: the metasearch product that drives hotel comparison traffic will operate with fewer people. Hotels that depend on Tripadvisor bookings may see slower product iteration there.

What happens to the leadership?

Goldberg exits February 16, 2027. That is a long runway for a departing CEO, and the company did not say who will succeed him or whether a search has started.

Noonan leaves December 31. Dalton takes over as interim CFO on January 1, in effect. She keeps her strategy and operations brief, the company indicated, while serving in the interim role.

The dual departure of a CEO and CFO within weeks of each other, alongside a failed segment consolidation, raises governance questions the company has not addressed.

How will Tripadvisor fund the pivot?

The company will use the $685 million from the sale of TheFork, its restaurant reservation business, to American Express to pay down debt. That sale, completed separately, removes Tripadvisor from the restaurant booking market entirely.

The debt paydown gives the company balance-sheet room while experiences revenue declines. Whether that room buys enough time for the segment to recover is the open question.

Tripadvisor said it will continue investigating strategic alternatives. The company has said this before, and it offered no new detail on what those alternatives might be or on what timeline.

What is the outlook?

The $40 million savings target and the debt paydown are the two hard commitments. Both are financial. Neither addresses the underlying problem Goldberg identified: the Tripadvisor-branded experiences channel is losing bookings while Viator grows, and SEO headwinds show no sign of easing.

The restructuring buys time and cash. It does not, on the evidence of the third quarter, fix the brand problem that Skift has long flagged: consumers book tours on Viator, not on Tripadvisor, and merging the teams behind them did not change that. Until a successor CEO articulates how the Tripadvisor channel reverses its high-single-digit decline, the savings figure is a cost measure, not a growth strategy.