Tripadvisor Is a Media Business So Why Did It Unload These 8 Brands?
Skift Take
While other online travel companies, such as Expedia Group, pursued robust media businesses over the years, Tripadvisor neglected it. In turn, it's now trying to make good on an unrealized opportunity. Shedding non-core assets could help with the focus.
To the uninitiated, it might be easy to miss the fact that Tripadvisor, with all its click-based advertising, is essentially a media company. Why then did it dispose this week of eight of its Smarter Travel Media brands?
The transaction took place without an official Tripadvisor press release, let alone a financial filing. There will be no countdown to await regulatory approval. That's because the asset disposal, which involved no employees because they had already been transferred within the company or furloughed, was inconsequential to Tripadvisor's financial results. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In the deal, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Hopjump, a marketing company offering travel deals, acquired eigh