By Nathan Gomes and Apratim Sarkar
Nov 5 (Reuters) - Tripadvisor said on Thursday its CEO and CFO will step down as the online travel firm grapples with stagnating sales, AI-powered competition and weakness in its core hotel-search business, sending its shares down 23%.
Shares of the company were on track for their biggest one-day drop since March 2024.
Tripadvisor said CEO Matt Goldberg would step down in February and CFO Michael Noonan would resign by the end of this year.
The Needham, Massachusetts-based
company also said it would cut about 425 employee and contractor roles in its Hotels & Other segment as part of a previously announced overhaul.
Tripadvisor said its board was working with an external firm to find potential candidates to lead the company "through its next chapter."
The shake-up comes as Tripadvisor faces pressure in its legacy hotel-search business, where travelers are increasingly using AI-powered tools to research destinations, compare hotels and plan trips without relying on traditional search platforms, threatening commissions and ad revenue.
Morningstar analyst Dan Wasiolek called Tripadvisor's challenges structural, citing growing competition from Google and other AI agents in the company's core hotel-search business.
"It's just because in a world of AI, there's even more pressures on their metasearch business. Again, I don't think there's anything that could have been done differently," Wasiolek added.
Tripadvisor has worked to reposition itself around its experiences business, which includes tours-and-activities platform Viator, while simplifying legacy operations.
The company had also faced pressure from activist investor Starboard Value, which criticized its leadership and pushed for a review of strategic alternatives, including a potential sale.
The activist investor has since cut its stake to 4.35% from about 9%, according to LSEG data.
Separately, Tripadvisor reported lower third-quarter adjusted profit on Thursday, as elevated expenses pressured margins.
(Reporting by Apratim Sarkar and Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)
