All right, thanks for joining us for the ATM slot on day two of the 41st Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference. If anyone doesn't know me, I'm Richard Clarke. I'm the analyst who covers global hotels and leisure at Bernstein, and delighted to have Matt Goldberg with me today, the President and CEO of Tripadvisor. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you, Richard.
I mean, look, let's start with, or get macro out of the way maybe a little bit earlier. You know, we've seen with your stock, a lot of other stocks, a lot of volatility. You know, to what extent does that, you know, that sort of round trip, that roller coaster we've sort of seen maybe of the stocks in the year to date being reflective of what you've actually seen internally within the business? Like, have you seen substantial consumer reaction to some of the things that have moved the market so dramatically?
Clearly we track the uncertainty in the macro very closely. And we're, you know, keenly aware that, you know, we're not immune to the ups and downs of the macro, but we really focus on the long term, which is that travel will continue to grow and we'll work through a macro. Now, we just reported for our quarter not long ago, and we had a good quarter, and, we reported that up until the point of early May, the travel consumer was durable. What we see is intent to travel. And it's interesting because I've been in this industry a long time. We used to have if-then statements. If this happens, then this will happen in travel. Some of those if-then statements don't hold anymore because the traveler is thinking differently about their pocketbook. They're thinking differently about experiences versus material goods.
They're thinking differently about categories of travel. Experiences, things to do, is still the mainstay of the travel budget, and it seems to be something that the travel consumer is going to defend. We watch it carefully. We also said, and I'm gonna keep my comments to where we were at the time of our reporting.
Sure.
We also said that, you know, in our experiences category, we're watching a few things. Certainly, the way that there may be bifurcation between the upper end and the lower end, it feels like it could be happening, but there's still travel happening. Summer intent is high. You know, people still wanna do, you know, more than three things when they go on a holiday, and that puts us in a really good position for that. We're watching cancellations. We're watching price. We haven't seen anything up until that moment that we reported that suggests that any big change is coming. We watch it carefully. We can adjust.
Of course, being in multiple categories, playing in hotel, where price comparison is really helpful with a consumer who might be price sensitive, as well as our partners who are very interested in high-performant traffic, which we can really deliver in these times, that seems to have some strength. We also are combining Meta with booking in our app, which is a really interesting opportunity. Experiences has a good tailwind. Of course, with restaurants, where we're also exposed in Europe, we have a really good territory and a category where you don't have to travel to do it. It has a local dimension. You certainly don't have to get on a plane to go somewhere new and have a meal.
We feel like we're well-positioned, but we're keenly aware that there are uncertainties, and we can adjust as we see things happen.
One of the things that you called out at the Q1 print was some strong pricing in the Meta business. You know, to what extent do you think that's a sign that, you know, Tripadvisor or, or Meta Search more broadly is, you know, somewhat more defensive? You know, other your partners will go and chase demand or pay more for demand, or do you think there are other drivers of that strong Meta pricing?
Yeah, certainly the first statement is true. Meta can perform, on the way up, and it can perform well, if there are choppy waters. That is because price comparison still brings tremendous insight. We've got a fantastic platform to deliver, both for the consumer and for our partners. There are other things happening there too. You know, one of our strategic areas of focus is to stabilize our hotel category. It is something we talk about a lot. We've been doing product work. We've been leveraging data. We've been leaning into our engagement strategy so that when our audience, which is still the largest audience available anywhere for travel, when they come to us and they are looking for what they want to do, where they want to stay, the experience they want to have, we've been giving them more content and more insight to keep them on the site longer.
That allows us to monetize on our site, which is one of our key, strategic initiatives, to monetize that large audience more effectively. It allows us to cross-sell. You may be interested in a hotel, but you may also wanna do an experience, and we can cross-sell that experience. Of course, as we do that, it warms that lead so that when they eventually do get passed off to a partner in Meta, it is a higher-performing lead. It actually is converting better, and that is driving up pricing. We are really excited about our product work, and we also think the product, Meta, has durability. When we combine it with booking in the app, which we're starting to do, that has become a very interesting use case for our most high-intent audiences.
Maybe just balance that against the strategy you mentioned in your first answer of, I don't know whether the right word would be experimenting or trialing, you know, direct booking within the app. You know, that feels like a shift away from the Meta product. Is that going to be the long-term strategy of Tripadvisor to have direct booking options? Or will those sort of always sit in alongside the Meta product?
It's interesting because we are finding it to be complementary. We're finding that the two can work together. Now, remember, booking is limited to our app today. We're going after a different segment of audience.
Yeah.
We're approaching it differently than we ever have before. We've got a partner. We're focused on the consumer experience. We wanna be a cross-category planning and booking, mobile experience. We think we can be as good as anyone in the world at that. What we're seeing is that when you combine booking of hotels, booking of experiences, booking of restaurants, and you combine that with how we're leveraging AI to solve the cold start problem as you wanna start planning a trip, to get more conversational, in our AI travel assistant, to use AI to get our content and our tools to be more personalized and more relevant than ever before, we're finding that that can work really well together. It is a different approach than we've ever done. We're excited about the early performance.
You know, we are seeing that those travelers who come to us, who are engaged in that way, are spending more time on our app. They are leaving more reviews and photos and tips. We're finding that they're converting at higher rates and starting to repeat. We're finding that we can drive ARPU up. We haven't even promoted this, right? This is something we were testing. We plan to roll it out further in the app. We're gonna start to promote it. We think that this is a really interesting trajectory. It is part of the overall strategy to stabilize that hotel category, to accelerate the experiences category, and to diversify our sources of traffic so that people are coming more direct and repeating and returning. The early indicators are good.
The job is to take that product work, continuously innovate on behalf of the consumer, deliver that value to our partners, and scale that up. That's why this year we're starting to invest in some thoughtful marketing about how we can scale that up.
Okay. Makes sense. Maybe just one last on the macro front. You know, maybe we're at the cusp of a, a deglobalization trend. It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts of that. You know, visa restrictions going up and, you know, maybe some people flying over the U.S. now. How important is a sort of robust, growing international travel pattern to Tripadvisor, or can you benefit from a more sort of domestic world?
Yeah, we think we can serve the consumer wherever they choose to go. We saw some of this during the pandemic where people stayed closer to home and they changed the kinds of things they wanted to do. The good news is we've got this category diversification. We're very strong on inventory, certainly in the experiences space, where we have the largest inventory by far of anybody else in the world. We can adapt and present a more relevant offer, whether it's domestic or international. Certainly, international, in many ways, there are segments of the consumer that's gonna continue to drive international. There are segments that are gonna go closer to home. The important thing is that we can do well when people travel. What we're seeing is that the traveler is not stopping traveling. They may travel closer to home.
You may see an increase in driving trips. You may see an increase in second and third-tier destinations. Our strategies are to have the inventory and categories that serve that traveler mindset. We feel pretty good, in any case.
Okay. Wonderful. Right. Let's move a little bit more onto strategy. So you've been CEO now for about three years, I think. Is that, is that correct? To what extent is the Tripadvisor today the Matt Goldberg Tripadvisor? Have you, is your strategy now in action, or is there more changes, more things you want to do?
Yeah, thanks. I started in July of 2022, so we're just coming up on three years. It has been one heck of a three years, a lot of fun, some challenges to work through, but very exciting in a period of incredible innovation. I'm as excited to be here as I've ever been. We started off by very clearly articulating that our vision was to be the most trusted source for travel and experience. That's important because trust and authenticity is becoming more rare and more valuable and more precious in an AI world. We think we sit really well on that nexus, particularly between travelers who are finding it hard to find trusted sources and how can I trust that I can book, and the operators that would like to meet them. That's the first thing.
Of course, as a group, every single one of our businesses is focused on that vision. Each part of our business has its own distinct strategy. The reason is that each is on its own unique path. It serves distinct audiences in distinct ways. Tripadvisor is a guidance platform. Our job there is to attract travelers and be the best in the world to make recommendations that are highly personalized and relevant. We do not want to force them down a funnel. We do not want to try to be another OTA. We want to be a guidance platform that can leverage AI and build the best products. That is what we have been doing. The first year was about organizing ourselves around an engagement strategy to do just that. The second year was to begin to deliver on that and see what worked.
You know, now we're starting to scale the impact of that so we can deliver stability in hotels, accelerate experiences, and go deeper into what's gonna cause people to come direct, whether that's the app, a membership opportunity that's gonna reward them for not only booking with us in that app, but also the way that they engage with us. We're really excited. We've got some launches to come this year that we'll say more about in the future, and that strategy is underway, and we are scaling it. It never happens as quickly as you want. Tripadvisor has transformative aspects to it. We've always said that we have legacy businesses there that are not gonna be our future growth. The idea is to get them all working together.
The good news is Tripadvisor, that brand, can serve as a demand generation platform for the rest. Viator is a very clear experiences OTA. Tripadvisor can guide you there, let you look at the broad set of opportunities, and Viator can help you go deep. If you know what experience you wanna have, we will have access to anything. The opportunity there is to scale. When I entered the company, that was just coming out of COVID. The demand profile was high. We were investing in marketing. I think we're starting to see the opportunity around our marketplace flywheel to get efficient marketing, working together with the product, working together with expanding supply and the way we serve operators.
Our investments are now becoming more balanced between marketing and R&D, because product is gonna be the best marketing opportunity that we have. It's gonna be the reason people come, stay, book, and return. Getting that working. Of course, we have not only the supply we have, but even with the largest supply, we continue to add second- and third-tier destinations, categories where we're under-penetrated, and that can work across both of our brands. Of course, TheFork, which is our smallest of the three businesses, but one that we're really proud of because it's made a lot of progress in the three years. That business is, you know, back when I arrived, it was burning quite a bit of EBITDA. We made the commitment very early on.
I know a lot of investors were somewhat skeptical that we could do this. We said we can continue to grow this. We can position ourselves as the leader in European dining. We can focus on unit economics, and we can deliver really strong double-digit growth, which we continue to do while we bring it into profitability. Of course, both of our marketplaces, you know, 2023, we were break-even at Viator. Last year, we delivered good EBITDA. We're gonna continue to accrete EBITDA in the future. Of course, TheFork hit last year as well. We're gonna continue to both grow B2B, B2C in a balanced way. We're adding partnerships that are showing the strength of that platform in Europe. Of course, dining has been an interesting category in the ecosystem, you know, and we think we're in a great territory.
We think that dining is an important part of the travel psyche because when people go, they wanna, they're thinking about where I wanna stay, where I wanna eat, what I wanna do. We feel really good about our categories. I'll just finish by saying we see tremendous opportunity ahead. These strategies are, as you say, the three-year of work that we've been doing. As we look forward, we see tremendous opportunity ahead. Opportunity to create value together in experiences where Viator and Tripadvisor can collaborate against marketing, against product, against supply, leveraging our group data asset, thinking about international opportunities. We've largely been US to US, US to Europe. We can start to think about other territories. Of course, in dining, you know, we think culinary experience is really interesting.
TheFork is increasingly experimenting with AI, which allows them to think about how to, you know, serve restaurants that are off-platform in unique ways and potentially the global restaurant set of relationships that we have. I think there is a lot of group opportunity to collaborate, leverage our assets, and create additional value going forward. We feel really good about the portfolio.
Great. Let's maybe move on to brand strategy. I'm sure it's a question you get fairly regularly, but is, you know, is three separate brands the right strategy, or should you have more, less brands than that? I'm sure it's been mentioned to you a number of times, you know, some of the transactions that have, for TheFork's peers that have gone on in the last year or so. And then, you know, we've had valuations attached to Viator's peers in the past. You know, in 10 years' time, is Tripadvisor gonna be one brand, three brands, 20 brands? You know, how do you think this business evolves as a group?
Ten years is a, is a long time.
Sure.
I think it will be a very dynamic 10 years. Anybody who thinks they can predict 10 years is nuts. What I will say is, you know, we're organized in the way we go to market. We are organized the way that our P&Ls run and the focus that we have brought to each one of those. That focus has served us well. We feel really good about the benchmarks that are out there in dining and experiences. We think that augers very well for the value that we are creating, particularly as we drive meaningful double-digit growth in those categories along with EBITDA and expand our EBITDA profile. What I would say is that I am very focused on the way that we can create value across the group.
I mentioned that we think there's tremendous value in experiences. Let me tell you why. We uniquely have multiple brands to leverage. One can generate tremendous demand and then do a really good job leveraging AI to make the perfect recommendation. The other can help you go very deep. Being an OTA in experiences is an advantage against being a horizontal who's trying to add experiences. We think the two of them together is very interesting. We also have the largest scale supply to leverage. We have a res tech asset that we can leverage. We have this incredible data asset to leverage. We've been very focused on the U.S. consumer. I think there's opportunity to think globally. We intend to be a global platform. Really excited about that.
When we think about the best way to organize ourselves, I mean, we're always open to adapting. We wanna be optimal in creating the value. We're less fixed on having to have, you know, sort of multiple different units doing their own thing. Brands are important, and we wouldn't want to dilute brands. We wanna use the brand for what it does best. It's hard to say whether we'll be, you know, more brands. I don't think we would try to, sort of force-fit all of these into one. You could create opportunity through the collaboration.
Okay. Excellent. You've talked about the freedom of being sort of post the Liberty Tripadvisor buy-in. You know, maybe you can just give some more color on that. What are you now free to do that you couldn't do when you maybe were working through this ownership struggle? Maybe that's a bit too strong, but, you know, now you're sort of free of that. You know, I guess the other question we get is, what happens to the board here? Is it giving you a chance to reshape the board? Does that give you some extra freedoms as well?
Yeah. I don't, I don't wanna overstate this point.
Yeah.
You know, we had a year of focus on this topic. There was a certain amount of distraction for senior management, although I will say that I'm really pleased we didn't distract our company with this. You know, there's a certain amount of effort that went into that. What this allows us to do is, number one, simplify our story.
Okay.
Because we had a certain amount of complexity. We had an overhang. We had a controlled shareholder. Certainly, there was a perspective there that we needed to be thoughtful of. This allows us to think about a single focus on our strategic positioning, our execution. It does allow us to think about governance. Certainly, we're gonna do board renewal. We will absolutely bring new perspectives to the board, and we think that is valuable. There are some perspectives on the board that were already here that we also think is valuable. Yes, it allows us to think about, you know, how to be an independent company with the governance that's appropriate and new perspectives to move faster. Of course, it simplifies our capital structure, and it makes it very clear what we can do around capital allocation.
I think that's all very good. I just would say it removes a party that would have been outsized when we think about what we're doing. I would say our management team is extraordinarily focused on clarity ahead, that we can deliver on that vision and so that each part of our business can succeed and that we can create value together as a group.
I'm, I suspect this isn't a question you can answer very clearly, but, you know, obviously, we've seen when Liberty put out their proxy documents that there have been various bids for the wider group over the last sort of 12 months. Is there any renewed interest that's come past the transaction?
The answer that I probably should give to that is proxies can stand for themselves.
Yeah.
From my perspective, it was great to see all the interest.
Yeah.
I think that there are a lot of parties that see a lot of value in our business.
Sure.
I hope that is true among our investors who we cherish the relationship as well. We think there's a lot of different ways to win. Our focus has always been start with accreting value in your assets, be very focused on your strategy, execute to the best of your ability as quickly as possible, innovate leveraging the latest technology. The rest will take care of itself. We truly believe that. We feel really good about the opportunities ahead. There are multiple ways to win, and we're gonna go after it.
Okay. Wonderful. Let's talk about AI. You mentioned it a couple of times. One of your peers, I guess, Brian Chesky, kind of makes a point that the most common travel startup is trying to do some kind of travel planner. And a lot of them don't, they fail in that enterprise. You know, what gives you the confidence that, you know, Tripadvisor can develop a sort of usable, useful AI-led travel planner?
We're already doing it. You know, when ChatGPT came along, which was in my first few months on the job, my posture was, let's not try to go first and capture the headlines.
Yeah.
Let's be really thoughtful about what's unique to us. Our travel planning tool, which we call Trips, builds an itinerary and solves the cold start problem. It leverages unique assets. It leverages our trust. It leverages the authenticity and provenance of real travelers who continue to come to our platform to sort of contribute content. Our job is to make it as easy as possible for them to do that, which we are doing. We're gonna reimagine the way that people contribute. Those contributions serve as the corpus for our ability to make the best possible recommendations. We can use AI, of course, to understand our logged-in users better and to segment those who come to our site to give them a better experience that can feel magical.
You put that together with making sure that they're connecting to the right content, they have the right tools, but then have an iterative conversational experience on our site. I think the Trip Planner will come together with an AI travel assistant that will ultimately be much more conversational. When you append at the right moment of intent the ability to book, then it becomes really interesting. Of course, we can do that across hotels, experiences, and restaurants. You're seeing that pay off because we've seen tremendous growth in our planner, tremendous ARPU from those who are using it, because they're, you know, multiples higher than members as a whole, which is multiples higher than the average user. We are seeing monetization, and we're seeing engagement levels rise. We're seeing conversion levels high.
We think that as we scale that, but it's one effort among many to have a very engaged planning experience, holistic experience. We're excited about the technology. We're leaning into it. It's not just on Tripadvisor, of course. It's across our marketplaces. It's not just in product. It's the way that we partner, and it's the way that we make ourselves more efficient. I think we're experimenting and learning and planning to scale as much as anybody in travel. We don't think it's common at all. We think we bring a unique perspective. We think we bring unique content, and we think we have unique assets to leverage.
Those unique assets to leverage, I guess, probably would you say data, the kind of user-generated content is at the heart of that?
There are two parts to the data. There is the user-generated content where, you know, we believe that we continue to offer the highest quality body of travel content because of the way that travelers have always used us. We also believe that first-party data is fundamental. Of course, with that very large-scaled audience at Tripadvisor, that is something that only we have, right? It is the intent data. It is the clickstream data. It is the behavioral data. It is also data that people give us when they log in. It is our ability to use prompt engineering to get them to answer some questions. Of course, as they contribute to our platform, we know more about them. Imagine a situation where, you know, it used to be that you contributed, and then you just, it was one size fits all.
Now when you contribute, we can make sure that we match the recommendations with your sentiment, with your experience, with what you really like. We'll also be able to understand, are you going on a business trip, or are you going on a personal trip? Now, we don't play big in business, but it's important to know that, because if you're with your family or if you're with your friends, you might wanna go golfing, or you might wanna go and have an experience, you know, at a park, with your kids. We're gonna get better and better and better. We're already seeing that happening. Pretty excited about it.
You've got your own AI strategy. You've also been a sort of founder partner with OpenAI, partner with Perplexity. Is there any conflict in doing that? Do you see that the strategies of working with third-party providers and having your own strategy can work alongside one another? Maybe how do you ensure that you're the one that leverages that data if you're sort of partnering with these other companies who have access to it?
Yeah. The first thing is I think you need to do both.
Yeah.
You know, we are going through a period with a technology that is generational. It's gonna change every company in the world. Human beings are gonna fundamentally adapt to it in different ways. And so, you know, we wanna make sure that we are experimenting not only on our own products but also in the ecosystem. I was really pleased that every platform in AI of scale really clamored and wanted to have a conversation with us. So we were very particular. But we were also very intent on experimenting, identifying who did we wanna work with and to what end? What did we wanna learn? Of course, there's a value exchange consideration, and we wanted to look and see where we would get value. But, you know, we're experimenting with Perplexity, so we really understand AI-first search. And of course, we're doing the same with OpenAI.
There, we can also experiment with Operator to understand where agentic AI is going and adapt our products and services and shape the future of what it means to be a travel player in that space. Of course, you know, with our proprietary relationships with operators and businesses, we do not think we are going to get disintermediated. We think the opportunity is to identify what that user experience is going to be with the players that are going to win and understand how to position ourselves there. We are doing a lot of work, and we have brought in a lot of talent, to focus on that.
We're looking at cross-platform and multimodal AI with Amazon, where we can start with voice and then think about photos and ultimately video and understand where our data is useful, but not our first-party data, where our POI data is useful. That's what we're doing with Microsoft as we're a sort of an anchor, a player in their AI data marketplace. We can understand how is it valuable, to whom, and for what. You put all of that together, and what we're in is experimentation mode both on our platforms and off. Our focus is how do we position ourselves to win in the future. From the conversations that I have, I think nobody has the final answer yet today. Maybe that's the Chesky comment.
Nobody has the answer. Not even, not even Brian.
Yeah.
If you're experimenting, if you're influencing, if you're learning, when you see an opportunity, you can scale it quickly. That's what we intend to do.
Okay. Wonderful. Let's maybe shift on, make a run through the brands. Start with Viator, which I think is now the one that you report first. Can you maybe talk about what you see as driving Viator's strong growth, what will continue to drive it? You know, is it travelers are doing more experiences? Is it online penetration within experiences? Are you taking share? What sort of drives the sort of outsized growth of Viator?
It's all of the above. You know, we have this advantage in having a demand generation platform that gives you all the things you could possibly think about doing, free and paid, in Tripadvisor. And getting that working as effectively as possible and in tandem with Viator is valuable. Viator has the focus of an OTA. We think in a category like this where the supply is so fragmented, creating that seamless booking experience is actually a very difficult challenge. We think having the focus of an OTA is very valuable. We also think the third-party relationships that we have and our strategy, which is different, and we lead in to be there wherever anybody happens to go. We think that gets us access to demand without having to market, and spend marketing to do it with partners.
We're happy to supply the OTAs, and we're happy to supply, you know, e-commerce and the offline travel agents to encourage offline to online. Of course, we also have tailwinds, right? We've got offline to online that is happening, and we think that continues to grow. We've got this incredible demand that we profiled, which I think is durable, about people defending experiences. We have the focus that we're bringing. Our goal is to be a comprehensive, holistic global platform to bring that B2C piece with multiple brands, to bring our B2B prowess. We think we're as good as anyone, if not better, to bring our res tech asset to the table, to bring our partnerships to the table, and to offer the best experiences platform anybody can find anywhere. That's what's driving our growth.
There is so much opportunity ahead.
I'm sure a question you've had a few times, but obviously, Airbnb's just relaunched experiences, and then we've also had Booking.com, obviously, talking up a sort of that's the next sort of quiver in their connected trip, the next arrow in their sort of connected trip quiver. You know, and we've also seen Expedia adding experiences to their B2B suite. You know, a lot of the other people getting involved in that. Is that just good for the category? You know, or is this additional competition? Maybe just your thoughts on competing with the new Airbnb experiences in particular.
We think the interest in this category just validates how big the opportunity is. We also think there's room for more than one player. We don't, you know, believe that it's, it's, you know, one takes everything. We think there's opportunity here. We also believe that being an OTA focused on experiences is an advantage, as I just said. We're happy to partner. There may be opportunities to partner with Airbnb. You know, they've tried this a few different times. We watch it closely. Of course, you know, we know them. You know, we think that it will bring awareness to a low-awareness category, which is good for us. They've tried it a few different times. They're trying it in different ways that may be challenging to scale. Again, we think it's good for the category.
We're also happy to serve Booking.com. We're very focused on working with Booking.com because, as I said, you know, we believe when we work with partners, it's incremental to what we're doing with Direct, and it's profitable. We feel like that serves our strategy really well. We think that we have a unique strategy. In the end, it's good for the category. Of course, it's also true that there will be new competitors, and we feel confident in our ability to compete.
Okay. Let's maybe shift to TheFork. I mean, compared to hotels, sometimes I think restaurant reservations feels like a slightly odd place that, you know, you can't, there's no one site where you can kind of see all of the availability that, you know, hotel, restaurants choose a platform. Is that, is that gonna change? Is that what TheFork's sort of aiming to be as a sort of, you know, a one-stop shop for all restaurant reservations within certain markets, maybe not globally?
As I said, we're really excited about what's happening at TheFork. We think the category is a good category for travelers. Travelers typically, when they think about what they wanna do, you know, they think about the experience that they wanna have. Increasingly, that's the first thing they think about. They think about where they wanna eat, and they think about how close is it to where I'm staying. We think it's a good category. We also recognize that it is unique because it has a travel dimension, but it also has a local dimension. We do think being in Europe and being focused on Europe, multiple languages, multiple countries, we think that our focus on that region has served us well.
Our strategy has been to deliver a B2C experience where we are making the best recommendations possible and getting that marketplace going. Of course, it is largely direct and mostly on our app. We feel good about that as well. We have a lot of room to grow in Europe. Now, do we have to offer every single restaurant? Not necessarily every single restaurant, but we have to have the right restaurants.
Right.
We do believe that AI gives us an opportunity, and we're innovating. I think this is very interesting. You can use AI now to serve restaurants and actually deliver bookings to restaurants that are not on your platform. That can be a new and highly efficient channel to convert them to be on your platform. That is very interesting, not only in Europe but outside Europe. What is also really exciting is that, you know, we were primarily driven by B2C in the past. Our technology and platform investments have been around getting our B2B, or software, to come up to speed. We now think we're at par or better. We are seeing tremendous growth, in particular to the restaurants who wanna come onto our paid software platform. We think that is an advantage to have B2B and B2C working together.
I would just say, you know, when brands like Vodafone and Mastercard come to us and say, "You know what? We really wanna work with you in Europe," it's becoming clear that our European position is strong and getting stronger. We're delivering double-digit growth with EBITDA. We think that we can expand our EBITDA margins there. We're really excited about the value that's being created at TheFork, and we think it, you know, it's one. I would also just mention in Europe, there's no OpenTable. There's no Resy. There's no Yelp. You've got Tripadvisor and TheFork. That's a pretty good position to lean into for the future.
In the past, I guess TheFork has entered new markets and been acquisitive. Is that a potential trajectory to rejoin? Are there other markets that could be interesting for TheFork to go into?
You know, we've got our focus on Europe. We think there's a ton of growth left in Europe, and we think that Europe can be defensible for us. Actually, we've pulled back from some far afield markets since I've been here to focus on Europe. As I said, I think technology allows you to think about new markets in different ways: more efficient, interesting, different, highly productive go-to-market. That is something that we're innovating with. Watch that space. More to come. We are very focused on getting growth out of Europe, and we will not get distracted from that.
Okay. Makes sense. Now, let's shift to Brand Tripadvisor. You know, I guess when I'm out talking to investors about Trip, about the Tripadvisor stock, you know, stabilizing Brand Tripadvisor often seems to be the thing they're most looking for. If we look at the sort of revenue decline we've seen, and it's got, you know, better, I guess, at Q1. It wasn't as bad as it was a couple of quarters ago. How much of that is your strategy? You know, you've sort of switched off a couple of the businesses, focused more on hotels. You've changed the way you've sort of distributed experiences and dining. So how much of it would you say you've been driving some managed decline within Brand Tripadvisor versus this is sort of external challenges?
It is exactly the strategy to think about how to take this audience.
Yeah.
That trusts us and, which has been durable over time and monetize it more effectively. What you've seen us do is to focus on what do we need to do around our product to attract and engage and get people coming and really focusing on that. We've shared KPIs that show that the strategy has paid off. I think what's really interesting is that the product work can stabilize hotels. We talked about how the work on Meta is actually getting people to engage longer, delivering a higher value customer to our partners, and pricing is benefiting from that. It also allows us to cross-sell and engage while they're on the site. That feels good, and it feels like there's more opportunity there. The strategy is deeper than that.
The strategy is about getting more people to come direct, to go into our app, to deliver that membership experience, and then, of course, to be cross-category. Accelerating experiences at Tripadvisor is gonna be an important part of this. Working with Viator to do that is something that we see opportunity ahead. Thinking about how to bring AI to the center of what we're doing and get the value out of AI for a guidance platform, we feel good about it. Of course, you know, this is a well-understood problem, what's happening in our legacy business. I'm sure that everybody in this room understands that going back to 2015, this has been an understood problem. It's just that we had an aberration in there in 2020.
Yeah.
which changed the directory at, you know, caused a dislocation, and then things came back. We always understood that this was going to be about doing that transformation work, that the legacy was not the future. We feel like our strategy is one that has, you know, the early indicators, the early signs of payoff. That is why we are, you know, being very thoughtful about how to start to think about scaling that. I will say with a business like Tripadvisor, this stuff does not happen overnight, you know. We are two years into that strategy, probably by the time we got it set and going. It probably has not happened as fast as I would like. We are very focused on where do we want to narrow our particular effort to drive the biggest opportunity. That is what we are focused on.
I think that will serve us well with TripAdvisor.
I guess in the past, we've talked about, you know, Brand Tripadvisor maybe having three monetization strategies with Meta Search, B2B, display advertising. Maybe you can talk about where you are on the strategy on the second and third of those. You know, you came from a background of a digital marketing company. You know, where are we in the sort of potential for Tripadvisor to make money from brand marketing?
You know, the B2B business is one that, you know, about a year and a half ago, our focus was it felt like our go-to-market was not as efficient as it needed to be. We wanted to shift towards self-serve, with B2B restaurants and hotels on Tripadvisor. We've been on that journey. It's going as we expected. That allows us to focus on the things that I've talked about previously. That's an area that we will think about. How do we deepen those relationships? How do we think about a category-focused B2B leveraging, you know, certainly on the hotel side, but also on the restaurant side where we have an asset and talent with a lot of experience in B2B that's going really well. We think there's some interesting opportunities there.
In terms of media, you know, I do come from a background leveraging media. I think media businesses in general are going through fundamental transformation right now. What we have that's useful and gives me great confidence is the data asset. We've got a platform which is an audience of scale. As our engagement continues to progress, we do think there's an interesting media business here. I wouldn't say it's the first monetization profile. I think in many ways, the transformation of Tripadvisor and maybe even the Tripadvisor group, which includes all of our businesses, is one from being, you know, kind of a travel-focused media business to being a business where experiences is at the heart.
Yeah.
We're shifting to marketplace economics. I think the shift to marketplace economics is a very valuable and durable shift. You can see it in the diversification, not only what we're seeing inside of Tripadvisor, but the portfolio as a whole, as revenue and EBITDA continue to rise at Viator and TheFork. You can see the way that the marketplace economics can work. Connecting that clearly to Tripadvisor is a strength for the future for us.
I mean, you sort of talked about the sort of transition of Meta Search. Is your view that it has a long-term future? There is a role for hotel Meta Search within the traveler's journey over the next decade.
Yeah. I think this product is an important product. I think that, while I wouldn't say it's the future growth driver, it can have a long life. We can optimize it. And we've already shown that we can do product work that improves it. Of course, that business is gonna be a function of what's happening with demand, what's happening with the product work that we do and the quality of the audience that we deliver, and of course, our bidding dynamics. You know, we are very close to our partners in that space, both the large OTAs, but also the independents who use us in that product. We work with them carefully to make sure that, you know, we are delivering highly converting, high-quality audiences. They can measure that very carefully. We understand their ROI objectives, and we can deliver against that.
I do think it has long life, but it's a business that is part of a portfolio. I think it can fit with booking of a segment of our audience. We've said it's in the app. I think that they can work together. We think that Tripadvisor's the future of Tripadvisor and the slowing decline that you've seen.
Yeah.
We expect that to continue to slow. The return to growth, modest growth, and EBITDA advances will be about that portfolio working well. That is what we're working on. You know, that's what we've expressed our confidence this year in.
You see, I think you've guided you expect 2026 to be the year where it can stabilize. What you're seeing in the sort of KPIs gives you confidence that that will be the case?
That's what we've expressed publicly. That's what we're working on. Of course, you know, as we think about our portfolio as a whole, understanding the role that Tripadvisor plays in the portfolio, understanding the experiences, growth, and value driver, understanding how dining works, we think together these will work well.
I guess a cynical view might be that some of the strategies at Tripadvisor have been tried before. You know, we had instant book in the past. Now we've got direct book in the app. You've talked about going back into loyalty. That was obviously something that created huge excitement under your predecessor a few years ago. That was a different loyalty program, obviously a sort of paid loyalty program. You know, how are you modifying those strategies? Why does direct book and loyalty work today that hasn't worked in the past?
I mean, we're approaching these very differently. You know, when the company had approached direct book in the past, it was more a motion to try to become another OTA.
Yeah.
We've been far more focused on segmenting our audience and bringing to them what they're looking for. The audience that we're getting to book hotels has a much higher intent. They're coming to have an integrated planning and booking experience. We think we can deliver on that. In the past, it was instead of that Meta offer. Now we think we can do it in a very compatible way. In the past, it was, we're doing this and hopefully the ecosystem will come along, and they didn't. We've been far more attentive to how we fit into the ecosystem among operators, about what we're doing, and among, of course, our partners in Meta around what we're doing. It's far more attentive to the ecosystem. I think it's very different.
The other thing I would say is that what we're looking at with membership now is nothing like the subscription product of the past, which I, I don't know that I would call it a membership or loyalty product. It was a subscription product, which was, you know, a good attempt and interesting idea and, you know, something that you, you know, we've chosen not to pursue. What we're looking at now, which we think is really interesting, is a free membership which really understands how to reward and create repeat behaviors for those who are coming and booking across categories. You can have a single wallet across categories. Your rewards can be across categories. Maybe even the membership could cross brands if we decided that that was in the interest of the consumer. That is very, very different.
The other thing that I think is really interesting and exciting is it's not only rewarding, you know, I think kind of earning and the ability to burn rewards, but also as members of our community engage, take certain actions, contribute to the platform, giving them not only the best experience but rewards for that activity. I think that will be unique in the ecosystem. We're gonna launch a discreet set of products this year on this topic. We're pretty excited about how it enhances the app, the member experience, and ultimately the engagement and monetization.
Okay. Two more I'm gonna try and squeeze in. I've got to take this one from the audience. I'm just gonna widen it out a little bit. Obviously you're trying to become a, you know, a trip planner, you know, the Trips app. To what extent does that mean you need to add other verticals onto the platform? This particular question says, would it be wise to include Lyft and Uber advanced bookings within your product set?
Yeah. I think there's a tremendous opportunity to think about who our strategic partners for the future are going to be. You know, we've been very focused on what we think are the most interesting categories, which is experiences, hotels, restaurants. But certainly there are opportunities for us to partner. I think partnership was not something we had done a lot of in the past. I think we are getting better at it. You can see us, in AI partnering, I think, effectively so far. And there are lots of opportunities. I think the logistics and the rideshare and, you know, perhaps even the food delivery, all very interesting categories. Good question. And then we can think about other categories too. You know, I don't necessarily wanna do a laundry list, but we're pretty active and have lots of conversations.
What we wanna go after, we wanna not get diluted by trying to do too many different things, but be really focused on which partnerships would serve the strategy that I articulated. That's where we're focused.
Maybe last question. The changes at Google we've seen in Europe with the DMA sort of cut Google down to size a little bit. We've had talk of anti-monopoly rules in the U.S. Are these a turning of the tide for Tripadvisor? Are these gonna be very helpful to your trajectory from here?
We don't rely on regulatory, for our strategy. We wanna focus on, you know, how do we differentiate ourselves?
Yeah.
What do we have that's valuable? What are we able to do that a competitor like that can't do? That is where we're focused. We also wanna be engaged with partners in the ecosystem to make the most of those partnerships. Of course, you know, if regulatory comes along, we'll take advantage of it to the best of our ability. We're always watching and adapting. I think we're very good at seeing the change and adapting to it. You know, we're going through a period of time where there is an unprecedented opportunity to position ourselves for the future. That is what we're intending to do with our vision very clear in our mind and the way that we create value together against that.
Okay. With that, Matt, thank you very much for your time today.
Thank you. Appreciate it.