Tripadvisor Q2: Hotels Revenue Falls 21% as SEO Pressure Costs Experiences Five Points of Growth

Tripadvisor reported second-quarter results on August 6 showing revenue and profit down year over year, with the hotel-facing business contracting sharply and the experiences business — the one the company is reorganising itself around — growing only 3%. Management quantified the search headwind for the first time, and the market reacted badly.

The quarter

Revenue from continuing operations was $441.9 million, down 7% year over year. Net income was $22.8 million, against $36.5 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA fell 21% to $76.4 million, or 17.3% of revenue. Marketing spend rose 4% to $215.4 million, from $207.4 million.

By segment:

• Experiences: revenue $278.6 million, up 3%. Segment bookings grew 5%; gross booking value grew 3% to approximately $1.4 billion. Adjusted EBITDA fell 19% to $30.8 million.
• Hotels and Other: revenue $163.3 million, down 21%. Adjusted EBITDA fell 23% to $45.6 million.

So the company spent more on marketing to grow experiences revenue 3%, while its hotel and media business shrank by a fifth. Shares fell sharply on the print, with reports of a roughly 20% premarket drop.

The SEO number

Asked about the gap between 5% bookings growth and 3% revenue growth in experiences, CFO Mike Noonan put a figure on the search problem.

"We estimate the impact of the SEO pressure accounted for approximately five percentage points of growth headwind to the segment," Noonan said, adding that "this drag to growth continues to moderate as SEO becomes a smaller share of overall bookings mix."

That is the clearest disclosure yet from a major travel brand on what the shift in search results is costing in booked volume. Anyone whose demand still routes through organic search should read the five points as a floor, not a ceiling — Tripadvisor has more brand equity in search than most.

What's replacing it, slowly

CEO Matt Goldberg pointed to distribution deals with OpenAI, Perplexity, Microsoft, Amazon and Anthropic, and said Viator is the first partner integrating its experiences inventory with Google Gemini. He was candid about the scale.

Answer-engine traffic is "really nice high-intent traffic," Goldberg said, but "it's dwarfed by where search has been historically, and so these deals are contributing value; they're growing."

That is the honest version of the AI-distribution story: high quality, low volume, not yet a replacement for what SEO used to deliver.

TheFork and the portfolio review

TheFork was classified as held for sale as of June 15 and is now reported as a discontinued operation rather than a segment. On a discontinued basis it posted $61 million of revenue, up 13% (10% in constant currency), and $11 million of adjusted EBITDA, roughly a 19% margin.

The $700 million all-cash sale to American Express Travel is still expected to close by the end of 2026. "The sale of TheFork unlocks significant value, adds flexibility for capital allocation and marks another step reshaping the company around experiences — the largest, most durable growth category in travel," Goldberg said.

More divestments may follow. Goldberg said the company is reviewing its portfolio to identify where to invest, pull back, optimise or divest: "Our work is intended to reshape this company to focus more directly on experiences and simplify the portfolio, because we understand that the complexity has been something that has not been rewarded."

Why it matters

Tripadvisor is executing a plan — shed non-core assets, concentrate on experiences — while the demand engine that funded that plan erodes underneath it. The Hotels and Other line falling 21% is the cost of the transition made visible. The five-point SEO figure is the number the rest of the industry should be benchmarking against.