It's no surprise that Facebook would intensify its efforts to wrangle marketing dollars from the travel vertical. There are no clues about whether Facebook will merely continue to merely host others' travel apps and take advantage of its audience, or whether travel e-commerce on its own is in the game plan.
Stephen Kaufer isn't going to be the most popular guy on Wall Street, but TripAdvisor's attempt to crunch user data and pour money into Facebook marketing to get better conversions for advertising partners, looks like a sage move. If analysts, looking for immediate results, don't like it, they can always write a review.