TripAdvisor (NASDAQ:TRIP) executives used the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call to highlight an ongoing shift away from legacy, SEO-dependent products and toward its marketplace businesses, led by experiences and European dining platform TheFork. Management said the transition has changed the company’s revenue mix and profit profile and is expected to continue through 2026.
2025 results show marketplace gains offsetting legacy declines
CEO Matt Goldberg said TripAdvisor delivered record revenue of $1.9 billion in 2025, driven by 10% revenue growth in experiences and 22% growth at TheFork, which helped offset an 8% decline in the company’s hotels and other segment. Group adjusted EBITDA was $319 million, or 17% of revenue.
Experiences: scale, repeat customers, and product velocity
Goldberg positioned experiences as the company’s top priority and “primary value driver,” noting management expects experiences alone to represent more than half of TripAdvisor’s consolidated revenue in 2026 and roughly 40% of adjusted EBITDA. He said the experiences market benefits from tailwinds including low online penetration and a fragmented supplier base.
Noonan reported that experiences booked volumes increased 18% in Q4, while gross booking value (GBV) grew 16% to approximately $980 million. Q4 experiences revenue rose 10% to $204 million, with foreign exchange contributing about three percentage points to both GBV and revenue growth. For the full year, experiences revenue increased 10% to $924 million, with GBV reaching more than $4.7 billion.
Management emphasized repeat behavior and improving unit economics. Goldberg said the business is “rapidly approaching $5 billion” in GBV and that a majority of bookings are coming from loyal, repeat customers who increasingly return through direct channels. Noonan added that repeat bookings are the fastest-growing cohort, comprising the majority of experiences GBV and representing the most profitable customer base.
On profitability, Noonan said experiences adjusted EBITDA in Q4 was $15 million (7% of revenue), down from $29 million a year earlier, largely due to a prior-year indirect tax benefit of about $4 million and incremental investments to accelerate bookings and support engineering, data, and AI initiatives. Full-year experiences adjusted EBITDA was $91 million, or a 10% margin, which Noonan said the company believes makes it “the most profitable scaled experiences platform in the world.”
Goldberg also detailed execution priorities across demand, product, and supply:
- Demand: Coordinating marketing across the Viator and Tripadvisor brands to improve ROI, expanding social media investment, and working with scaled strategic partners in AI while aiming to lower marketing spend as a percentage of revenue.
- Product: Increasing experimentation velocity, with testing volume more than doubling versus the prior year, and using AI and machine learning to improve personalization, merchandising, and booking flexibility.
- Supply: Growing experiences supply to more than 425,000 products from 70,000 suppliers, with quality scores above 4.5 out of five stars rising roughly 20% year-over-year.
On channel mix, Noonan said third-party points of sale remained a faster-growing contributor than the segment overall but stepped down as the company lapped a period of high growth from merchant partners. He also said SEO is not a large channel for experiences and is expected to be less than 10% of GBV as the company exits 2026.
TheFork: growing bookings, premium plan adoption, and profitability
Goldberg said TheFork has strengthened its market position by diversifying revenue, improving marketing efficiency, and using R&D investments to increase profitability. He noted that in TheFork’s mature B2C offering, more than 80% of bookings come from repeat diners, and nearly 80% of bookings come through the mobile app.
Noonan reported TheFork revenue grew 18% in Q4 to $57 million (9% constant currency), with B2C bookings up 9%. For the full year, TheFork revenue increased 22% to $221 million (17% constant currency). TheFork’s adjusted EBITDA was $1 million in Q4 (2% margin), and $21 million for the full year (9% margin), which he said was an improvement of more than 600 basis points.
However, Goldberg said TheFork has “more limited strategic synergies” with the company’s direction as it becomes more experiences-focused. As a result, TripAdvisor has decided to explore strategic alternatives for TheFork as part of a broader portfolio review, describing this as a potential way to increase capacity for capital returns while balancing investment in experiences.
Legacy hotels and media: managing for profit amid traffic headwinds
Management said the hotels and other segment continues to face structural demand and traffic headwinds tied to changes in search and the rise of AI overviews. Noonan reported Q4 hotels and other revenue declined 15% to $151 million, while media and advertising revenue fell 17% to $30 million. For the full year, hotels and other revenue decreased 8% to $750 million.
Noonan said the company is optimizing its hotels offerings for profitability rather than low-margin revenue, citing strong hotel meta pricing due to the “high quality travel intent” delivered to partners. Hotels and other adjusted EBITDA was nearly $30 million in Q4 (20% margin) and $207 million for the full year (28% margin), helped in part by lower personnel costs tied to a cost savings program.
Goldberg said the company will continue aligning costs with revenue, evaluating strategic partnerships to stabilize and add scale, or potentially exiting certain business lines where it is not driving value, while continuing to benefit from TripAdvisor’s base of traveler contributions. He noted that nearly 80 million contributions were shared on Tripadvisor last year despite traffic pressure.
AI initiatives and 2026 outlook
Goldberg said TripAdvisor launched an “AI-native MVP” in Q4, describing it as a shift toward building AI-first products designed to deliver more relevant, personalized recommendations and make travel choices easier to validate and book. He said early data shows the MVP outperforming prior on-site AI efforts on key engagement and conversion metrics, though he cautioned it is too early to determine how AI innovation will affect the company’s financial profile.
He also discussed partnerships, including apps in ChatGPT for Viator, Tripadvisor, and TheFork, and said the company is seeing “significant increases” in traffic coming from large language models with higher revenue per visitor, although still small relative to other sources.
For 2026, Noonan guided to modest consolidated revenue growth, with marketplace businesses expected to represent about two-thirds of revenue as the company exits the year. Segment expectations included:
- Experiences: Low-teens revenue growth, with owned-and-operated points of sale accelerating while third-party growth slows as comps get tougher; the company expects roughly flat bookings volume growth for the overall segment due to mix.
- TheFork: Low- to mid-teens revenue growth, including an estimated currency benefit of about 400 basis points; B2B growth expected above 20% driven by premium software expansion.
- Hotels and other: Mid- to high-teens revenue declines, with some stabilization expected in the second half as comparisons ease.
On profitability, Noonan said the company expects flat to modest adjusted EBITDA margin expansion and mid-single-digit EBITDA growth, with marketplace businesses contributing about 50% of overall EBITDA in 2026, up from 35% in 2025.
For Q1 2026, Noonan projected consolidated revenue down 3% to 5% year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA margin of roughly 3% to 5%, citing the seasonal low quarter for marketplace revenue and continued declines in hotels and other.
TripAdvisor ended 2025 with about $1 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and Noonan said the company plans to use Term Loan B proceeds raised in early 2025 to repay convertible notes due in April. The company repurchased $50 million of shares in Q4 and $90 million during the year, with about $110 million remaining under its authorization.
About TripAdvisor (NASDAQ:TRIP)
TripAdvisor (NASDAQ:TRIP) is a leading online travel company that operates a digital platform for travel information, reviews and booking services. The company’s flagship website and mobile apps allow users to access and contribute travel-related content—ranging from hotel and restaurant reviews to ratings for tours, attractions and vacation rentals—helping consumers plan and book trips around the world.
The core of TripAdvisor’s offering is its community-driven review system, which aggregates user-generated feedback alongside editorial content and professional photography.
