Tripadvisor Finetunes Its Subscription Travel Bet

Tripadvisor has spent the pandemic changing its tune, metaphorically speaking. For years, the Massachusetts-based company run by co-founder and CEO Stephen Kaufer sang the praises of a model where consumers could read reviews of travel services and then either click away to book them or else book instantly through its site and app. Now the $5 billion company has moved away from trying to draw the largest audiences possible to instead woo its most loyal fans into coughing up money for exclusive discounts and perks on travel. On Friday, Tripadvisor used its second quarter earnings call to give analysts an update on its annual subscription-based membership program, Tripadvisor Plus, which it began discussing in late 2020, as Skift was first to report. "It is very early days but I have to say, I think we're really on to something here," said Kaufer. "We have plenty of examples of fantastic subscription businesses in a bunch of other categories, but not yet in travel. So with our traffic, our brand trust, we think Tripadvisor is just the ideal company to create a really affordable plan that lets everyone, as we say, up their travel."

See Stephen Kaufer of Tripadvisor at Skift Global Forum in NYC September 21-23

Earlier this year, the company began testing the subscriptions, which offer discounts to consumers for hotels and experiences along with other perks in exchange for an annual fee that's typically $99, with some free trials. It said then that it was offering about 100,000 properties. On Friday, the company described its subscription program as offering discounts at "more than 100,000 hotels." In July, the company signed its first hotel chains for direct supply partnerships, as Skift reported. The 850 properties across the four hotel chains — Barceló Hotels, Melia Hotels International, Millennium Hotels and Resorts, and Pestana Hotel Group — have yet to be fully integrated, it said. Tripadvisor said it had entered into a Plus-related partnership