TripAdvisor Inc

Overview

The Tripadvisor group operates as a family of brands with the purpose of connecting people to experiences worth sharing. The Company's vision is to be the world’s most trusted source for travel and experiences. The Company operates across three business segments: Brand Tripadvisor, Viator, and TheFork. We leverage our brands, technology platforms, and capabilities to connect our large, global audience with partners by offering rich content, travel guidance products and services, and two-sided marketplaces for experiences, accommodations, restaurants, and other travel categories.

Brand Tripadvisor’s purpose is to empower everyone to be a better traveler by serving as the world’s most trusted and essential travel guidance platform. Since Tripadvisor’s founding in 2000, the Tripadvisor brand has developed a relationship of trust and community with travelers and experience seekers by providing an online global platform for travelers to discover, generate, and share authentic user-generated content (“UGC”) in the form of reviews and opinions for destinations, points-of-interest (“POIs”), experiences, accommodations, restaurants, and cruises in over 40 countries and in more than 20 languages across the world. Tripadvisor offers more than 1 billion user-generated reviews and opinions on over 9 million experiences, accommodations, restaurants, airlines, and cruises. Tripadvisor’s online platform attracts one of the world’s largest travel audiences, with hundreds of millions of visitors annually.

Viator’s purpose is to bring extraordinary, unexpected, and forever memorable experiences to more people, more often, wherever they are traveling. In doing so, Viator elevates tens of thousands of businesses, large and small. Viator delivers on its purpose by enabling travelers to discover and book iconic, unique and memorable experiences from operators around the globe. Our online marketplace is comprehensive and easy-to-use, connecting millions of travelers to the world’s largest supply of bookable tours, activities and attractions—nearly 400,000 experiences from more than 65,000 operators. Viator is a pure-play experiences online travel agency (“OTA”) singularly focused on the needs of both travelers and operators with the largest supply of bookable experiences available to travelers.

TheFork’s purpose is to deliver happiness through amazing dining experiences as the leading online restaurant booking platform in Europe. At the forefront of championing restaurant culture, TheFork harnesses technology to promote real life connections between diners and restaurateurs. With a network of approximately 55,000 partner restaurants across 11 countries, nearly 40 million app downloads and more than 20 million reviews, TheFork is a go-to platform for all food lovers to enjoy unforgettable restaurant experiences. Through TheFork, users can easily find restaurants according to their preferences, check real-time availability, instantly book online 24/7, benefit from special offers and pay directly to the restaurants. For restaurateurs, TheFork's technology enables them to optimize reservation management and occupancy rates, increase bookings and visibility, limit the impacts of no-shows, manage payments and streamline operations, all while accessing the broadest community of loyal diners.

Our Industry and Market Opportunity

We are one of the world’s largest online travel companies and our consolidated annual revenue in 2024 represents a small fraction of total worldwide travel spending, which highlights the potential size of our global market opportunity. Phocuswright, an independent travel, tourism and hospitality research firm, estimated global travel spending, exclusive of experiences, vacation rentals, and dining, at approximately $1.6 trillion in 2024. Phocuswright estimates global travel spending will reach approximately $1.9 trillion by 2027, with an expected increasing share booked through online channels each year.

We believe that we are a compelling leader in the global experiences industry and well positioned to capture increased share in a large and growing market that we estimate to reach approximately $365 billion by 2028 based on data from Arival’s October 2022 report (the “Arival Report”), a leading research provider on the in-destination experiences industry, and internal company projections. Moreover, we believe we are poised to benefit from increased online adoption in the global experiences industry. Based on data from Phocuswright and Arival, we estimate online penetration in experiences is approximately half of other major travel categories, such as hotel accommodations, and we anticipate the total size of the online experiences market will continue to grow as travelers become increasingly aware of the category online and operators continue to shift their business online. In addition, OTAs are the fastest growing channel in the travel experiences market and are expected to undergo significant growth going forward, with the OTA channel expected to experience a compounded annual growth rate (“CAGR”) of 37% from 2022 to the end of 2025 according to the Arival Report.

Based on information in Euromonitor's February 2022 report, a leading provider of global business intelligence, market research data and analysis, we estimate the full-service European restaurants industry may reach approximately $250 billion by the end of 2025. In addition, based on this same data, this industry is exhibiting a similar trend as the experiences’ industry in terms of online adoption; the majority of restaurant reservation bookings still take place offline, but an increasing share is booked through online channels each year. We believe that we are still early in the global shift in consumer adoption towards booking experiences and restaurants online, which provides an exciting future market opportunity for our business.

Our Business Strategy

The Tripadvisor group operates in a unique position in the travel and experiences ecosystem as a result of the following:

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We operate in large, global, and growing addressable markets including travel, experiences, and digital advertising;

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We have a large, global, and engaged audience making meaningful contributions that reinforces a relationship of trust and community; and

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We possess a wealth of high-intent data that comes from serving our audience of travelers and experience seekers at different points along their journey - whether they are engaging on our platforms for inspiration on their next experience, planning a trip, or making a purchasing decision.

In the Brand Tripadvisor segment, we offer a compelling value proposition to both travelers and partners across a number of key offerings that include accommodations, experiences, dining, and media. This value proposition is delivered through a collection of durable assets that we believe are difficult to replicate: a trusted brand, authentic UGC, a large community of contributors, and one of the largest global travel audiences. Our strategy in this segment is to leverage these core assets as well as our technology capabilities to provide travelers with a compelling user experience to help make the best decisions in each phase of the travel journey, including pre-trip planning, in-destination, and post-trip sharing. We intend to drive new traveler acquisition and repeat audience engagement on our platform by offering meaningful travel guidance solutions and services that reduce friction in the traveler journey and create a deeper, more persistent relationship with travelers. We evaluate investment opportunities across data, product, marketing, and technology that we believe will improve and diversify the monetization of our audience through deeper engagement, which, we expect will, in turn, drive more value to our partners.

The Brand Tripadvisor segment plays an important role in our portfolio. For over two decades, we believe we have built difficult to replicate assets such as a trusted brand, authentic content, a large community of contributors, and one of the largest global travel audiences. Our long-term strategy for the Brand Tripadvisor segment builds on our heritage and the reasons hundreds of millions of travelers come to Tripadvisor each year. Fundamental to this strategy will be: (1) innovating and enhancing world-class travel guidance and planning products to help travelers make confident decisions in a world where it is hard to find advice you can trust; (2) prioritizing deeper engagement with travelers, increasing members, and repeat customers by leveraging our rich data and technology assets to provide more relevant, curated, and contextual content throughout the traveler journey; and (3) driving a step change in the value we can deliver to our partners by accelerating and diversifying the monetization of our valuable audience across key categories, including hotel meta, media advertising, experiences, and restaurants. As we continue to focus on offering a more compelling product and experience that better meets travelers’ needs across their end-to-end travel journey, we believe we will be better able to drive deeper engagement through direct channel growth, including via our mobile app. As this direct engagement with users improves and scales, we will be able to collect valuable data and create more relevant opportunities to monetize, which we believe will result in a meaningfully higher average revenue per user over time.

In the Viator and TheFork segments, we provide two-sided marketplaces that connect travelers and diners to operators of bookable experiences and restaurants, respectively. Within the Viator and TheFork segments, we are investing in growth, future scale, and market share gains to accelerate our market leadership position, while working to improve unit economics on both sides of the marketplace with the goal of sustainable future profitability. This means driving awareness and higher quality audience engagement, which we believe will drive greater repeat bookings, more direct traffic, and translate into improved unit economics over time. Our investments on both sides of our marketplace, as well as in our primary offerings, are intended to deliver a differentiated value proposition that we believe will drive sustainable market leadership as our partners, operators, and travelers find themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace environment. We are focused on continuing to grow both our supplier base and our user base by offering innovative tools and features on our branded platforms, and through continued awareness of our brand through marketing efforts.

We are focused on executing initiatives across Tripadvisor group through organic investment in data, products, marketing and technology to further enhance the value we deliver to travelers and partners across our brands, platforms, and segments. In addition, we may accelerate growth inorganically by opportunistically pursuing strategic acquisitions.

Our Business Models

We manage the Brand Tripadvisor segment primarily through the following revenue sources and related business models:

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Tripadvisor-branded Hotels Revenue. The largest source of Brand Tripadvisor segment revenue is generated from click-based advertising on our hotel meta platform (also referred to as our hotel auction), which consists primarily of contextually-relevant booking links to partner websites, which predominantly include OTAs and hotels. Click-based advertising is generally priced on a cost-per-click (“CPC”) basis, with payments from partners determined by the number of clicks generated on a commerce link multiplied by the CPC rate for each particular click. CPC rates are determined in a dynamic, competitive auction bidding process. We also generate click-based advertising revenue on a cost-per-acquisition (“CPA”) basis, with payments from partners determined by a contractual commission rate based on a traveler click generated on our platform that ultimately results in a hotel booking and stay via the partners’ websites.

We provide additional business-to-business (“B2B”) offerings to hotels and related accommodation partners that deliver other unique opportunities to further promote, advertise, and operate their businesses as well as merchandise their inventory on our platform. These include a subscription-based advertising solution, with revenue determined by a contractual fee and time duration, or other CPC-based advertising solutions through hotel sponsored placements on our platform.

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Media and Advertising Revenue. We offer endemic and non-endemic advertisers opportunities to promote their brands primarily through display-based advertising (or “media advertising”) placements across our brands on our platform. Our advertising clients are predominantly direct suppliers of hotels, airlines and cruises, as well as destination marketing organizations (“DMOs”), OTAs, and other travel related businesses. Display-based advertising placements are predominantly sold on a cost per thousand impressions (“CPM”) basis.

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Tripadvisor Experiences and Dining Revenue. We merchandise, on the Tripadvisor platform, bookable experiences available on Viator and bookable dining reservations available on TheFork and earn affiliate marketing commission revenue on bookings that are driven by our platform, which are fulfilled by Viator and TheFork, respectively. These transactions generate intercompany (intersegment) revenue which is eliminated on a consolidated basis. The nature and economics of these transactions are consistent with the Viator segment and TheFork segment, as described below.

We provide additional B2B offerings to restaurant partners that deliver other unique opportunities to further promote, advertise, and operate their businesses as well as merchandise their businesses on our platform. These offerings can be subscription-based, with revenue determined by a contractual fee and time duration, or CPC-based advertising solutions through restaurant sponsored placements on our platform.

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Other Revenue. We provide travelers additional offerings across various other travel categories, including cruises, vacation rentals, flights, and rental cars. We provide these offerings across a collection of brands that complement and reinforce our segment strategy of providing differentiated guidance that helps travelers reduce friction and make better decisions. Our vacation rentals platform displays and promotes vacation rentals inventory, including contextually-relevant booking links to third-party booking partners, in exchange for which, we earn a commission when travelers complete a booking on the third-party booking partner's website. Our cruise, flight, and rental cars offerings generate revenue primarily through click-based and display-based advertising solutions.

The Viator segment offers travelers a comprehensive online marketplace that provides access to nearly 400,000 experiences and more than 65,000 experience operators. These experiences are instantly bookable online in over 200 countries. Viator's business model relies on the success of travelers and operators who join our marketplace and generate consistent bookings over time. As experience operators become more successful on our platform and as travelers return over time, we benefit from the recurring activity on our marketplace. We generate revenue through commissions for each booking transaction we facilitate directly and indirectly through our platform. Through Viator, we also power traveler experience bookings on behalf of third-party distribution partner websites, including the Tripadvisor platform as well as many of the world’s major OTAs, airlines, hotels, online and offline travel agencies, and other prominent content and eCommerce brands. For the majority of experience bookings, we collect the full amount charged to the traveler at the time of booking and remit the operator’s portion after the booked experience occurs. In addition, Viator offers our “Reserve Now, Pay Later” payment option, which allows our travelers the option to reserve certain experiences and defer payment until a date no later than two days before the experience date.

TheFork segment offers travelers and diners a comprehensive online marketplace that provides access to approximately 55,000 restaurants to discover and book reservations in 11 countries across the U.K., western and central Europe. We primarily generate revenue for each booking reservation we facilitate on our platform, calculated on a per seated diner fee basis and paid for by the restaurant partner. We also generate revenue on a subscription basis from restaurant partners by providing, for a fee, access to premium online reservation booking software and related services offerings to help them more effectively and efficiently manage their business, as well as, partnerships with non-restaurant partners providing dining experiences to elevate and unlock benefits for their users and members.

Seasonality

Consumer travel expenditures have historically followed a seasonal pattern. Correspondingly, travel partner advertising investments, and therefore our revenue and operating profits, have also historically followed a seasonal pattern. Our financial performance tends to be highest in the second and third quarters of a given year, which includes the seasonal peak in consumer demand, including traveler accommodation stays, and travel experiences taken, compared to the first and fourth quarters, which represent seasonal low points. In addition, during the first half of the year, experience bookings typically exceed the amount of completed experiences, resulting in higher cash flow related to working capital; while during the second half of the year, particularly in the third quarter, this pattern reverses and cash flows from these transactions are typically negative. Other factors may also impact typical seasonal fluctuations, such as significant shifts in our business mix, adverse economic conditions, public health-related events, as well as other factors.

Marketing

We have established world-renowned, widely used, and recognized brands through the innovative and efficient implementation of marketing and promotional campaigns. Particularly, we believe we have been successful with the strategic use of a number of cost effective online and offline marketing channels to reach travelers and diners, including our own platform channels (i.e., websites and apps), online search engines (primarily Google), social media, email, generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) platforms (i.e., chatgpt), media via public relations, partnerships, and content distribution. Our omni-channel marketing programs are intended to showcase the value of our industry-leading travel brands; increase user traffic; efficiently drive transactions and engagement; optimize ongoing traveler acquisition costs; and strategically position our brands in relation to one another as we continue to differentiate our offering versus those of our competitors. Our sustained scale and profitability depend on our ability to effectively maintain our costs and increase the overall number of users engaged on our platforms and their subsequent transactions. We continue to focus on our ability to attract and engage new and repeat users and encourage users to directly visit our websites and apps. We have the ability to manage our marketing investments across our portfolio of brands to optimize results for the Company. Our flexibility enables us to make decisions on a brand-by-brand, market-by-market, travel segment and customer basis that we think are appropriate based on the relative growth opportunity, the expected returns and the competitive environment.

Competition

We operate in a very competitive set of market environments that constantly evolve and change. Some of our current and potential competitors, listed below, have significantly more customers, data, and financial and other resources than we do, and may be able to leverage those strengths to compete more aggressively with us.

Across our three segments, we primarily compete, and in some cases partner, with the following businesses:

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General OTAs, such as Expedia, Booking Holdings Inc. (“Booking”), Airbnb, Traveloka, Despegar, Trip.com, and their respective subsidiaries and operating companies;

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Experiences OTAs, such as GetYourGuide, Klook, and TUI Musement;

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Hotel metasearch providers, such as trivago, Kayak and Skyscanner;

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Online search, social media, and marketplace platforms for advertising spend, such as Google, Facebook, X, Pinterest, and Snap;

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Global and regional travel, experiences, and restaurant brands seeking to promote direct bookings;

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Emerging online advertising businesses, such as ad-supported retail and entertainment platforms like Amazon, Spotify, and Walmart;

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AI driven travel curators;

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Traditional offline travel agencies; and

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Global and regional restaurant technology providers for reservation management and related services, such as OpenTable, Resy, and Tock.

Commercial Relationships

We have commercial relationships with a majority of the world’s leading OTAs, as well as thousands of other travel partners, pursuant to which these companies primarily purchase traveler leads from us, generally on a click-based advertising basis. Although these relationships are memorialized in agreements, many of these agreements are for limited terms or are terminable at will or on short notice. As a result, we seek to ensure the mutual success of these relationships.

For the year ended December 31, 2024, Booking (and its subsidiaries) accounted for 10% or more of our consolidated revenue, and together with Expedia (and its subsidiaries), our two most significant travel partners, accounted for approximately 22% of our consolidated revenue. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, Expedia and Booking each accounted for 10% or more of our consolidated revenue, and together accounted for approximately 25% and 31%, respectively. Nearly all of this concentration of revenue is recorded in our Brand Tripadvisor segment during these reporting periods.

Additionally, our business is dependent on relationships with third-party service operators that we rely on to fulfill service obligations to our customers where we are the merchant of record, such as our experience providers. However, no single operator’s inventory resulted in more than 10% of our revenue on a consolidated basis or at a reportable segment level in any period presented.

Operations and Technology

We have assembled a team of highly skilled software engineers, computer scientists, data scientists, network engineers and systems engineers whose expertise spans a broad range of technical areas, including a wide variety of open source operating systems, databases, languages, analytics, networking, scalable web architecture, operations and warehousing technologies. We make significant investments in product and feature development, data management, personalization technologies, scalable infrastructures, networking, data warehousing, and search engine technologies.

Our systems infrastructure for Tripadvisor-branded websites is in a "hybrid-cloud" configuration in which parts of it are housed at a colocation facility and managed by our operations team, while the rest is hosted on Amazon Web Services. Our infrastructure installations have multiple communication links as well as continuous monitoring and engineering support. The co-location facility is protected with both network-level and application-level defenses, using well known commercial solutions specifically tailored for such purposes. We make use of Amazon Web Services availability zones to provide redundancy for the cloud portions of our infrastructure. Substantially all of our software components, data, and content are replicated in multiple data centers and development centers, as well as backed up at offsite locations. Our systems are monitored and protected through multiple layers of security. Several of our individual subsidiaries and businesses have their own technology teams to support business growth while leveraging common assets, tools and processes for scale across the group.

Intellectual Property

Our intellectual property is an important component of our business. We rely on our intellectual property rights covering a number of assets, including our content, proprietary technology, software code, ratings indexes, and databases of reviews, forum content and other types of user-generated content. We have acquired some of our intellectual property rights through licenses and content agreements with third parties and these arrangements may place restrictions on the use of our intellectual property.

We protect our intellectual property by relying on our terms of use, confidentiality agreements and contractual provisions, as well as on international, national, federal, state and common law rights. We protect our brands by pursuing the trademark registration of our core brands, as appropriate, maintaining our trademark portfolio, securing contractual trademark rights protection when appropriate, and relying on common law trademark rights when appropriate. We also register copyrights and domain names as deemed appropriate. Additionally, we protect our trademarks, domain names and copyrights with the use of intellectual property licenses and an enforcement program.

We have considered, and will continue to consider, the appropriateness of filing for patents to protect future inventions, as circumstances may warrant. However, many patents protect only specific inventions and there can be no assurance that others may not create new products or methods that achieve similar results without infringing upon patents owned by us.

In connection with our copyrightable content, we post and institute procedures under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and similar “host privilege” statutes worldwide to gain immunity from copyright liability for photographs, text and other content loaded on our platform by consumers. However, differences between statutes, limitations on immunity, political and regulatory efforts to amend relevant statutes, and moderation efforts in the many jurisdictions in which we operate may affect our ability to claim immunity.

From time to time, we may be subject to legal proceedings and claims in the ordinary course of our business, including claims of alleged infringement by us of the trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property rights of third parties. In addition, litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights, protect our trade secrets or determine the validity and scope of proprietary rights claimed by others. Any such litigation, regardless of outcome or merit, could result in substantial costs and diversion of management and technical resources, any of which could materially harm our business.

Regulation

We are subject to a number of laws and regulations that affect companies conducting business on the internet as well as some relating to the travel industry, the provision of travel services and the vacation rental industry. As we continue to expand the reach of our brands into additional international markets and expand our product offerings, we are increasingly subject to additional laws and regulations. This includes laws and regulations regarding privacy and data protection, libel and defamation, content, digital services, intellectual property, distribution, electronic contracts and other communications, consumer protection, taxation, online payment services and competition, among others. These laws and regulations are constantly evolving and can be subject to significant change. Many of these laws and regulations are being tested in courts, and could be interpreted by regulators and courts in ways that could harm our business. In addition, the application and interpretation of these laws and regulations is often uncertain, particularly in the new and rapidly-evolving industry in which we operate. In addition, we provide advertising services and conduct marketing activities that are subject to consumer protection laws that regulate unfair and deceptive practices, domestically and internationally, including, in some countries, pricing display requirements, licensing and registration requirements and industry specific value-added tax regimes. The U.S. (as well as individual states), the E.U. (as well as member states) and other countries have adopted legislation that regulates certain aspects of the internet, including online editorial and user-generated content, data privacy, behavioral targeting and online advertising, taxation, and liability for third-party activities. It is difficult to accurately predict how such legislation will be interpreted and applied or whether new taxes or regulations will be imposed on our services, and whether or how we might be affected. Increased regulation of the internet could increase the cost of doing business or otherwise materially adversely affect our business, financial condition or operating results.

We are subject to laws that require protection of user privacy and user data. As our business has evolved, we continue to receive and store a greater volume of personal information. This data is increasingly subject to laws and regulations in numerous jurisdictions around the world. For example, in 2018, both the E.U. and United Kingdom adopted the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. GDPR, which imposes stringent requirements on the processing of health and other sensitive data.

In the U.S., at the federal level, failing to take appropriate steps to keep consumers’ personal information secure may constitute unfair acts or practices in or affecting commerce in violation of Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C § 45(a). Regulators and legislators in the U.S. are also increasingly scrutinizing and restricting certain sensitive personal data transfers and transactions involving foreign countries. Also, in the U.S., an increasing number of state laws govern privacy and security of personal information. For example, in California, the California Consumer Protection Act, or CCPA, establishes a comprehensive privacy framework for covered businesses similar to those established under GDPR. Similar laws have been passed in numerous other states. These new laws will add complexity, variation in requirements, restrictions and potential legal risks; require additional investment of resources in compliance programs; impact data practices and the availability of previously useful data; and could result in increased compliance costs and/or changes in business practices and policies.

Compliance with these laws, rules and regulations has not had, and is not expected to have, a material effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. However, there are, and will likely continue to be, an increasing number of laws and regulations pertaining to the internet and online commerce and/or information retrieved from or transmitted over the internet, online editorial and user-generated content, user privacy, behavioral targeting and online advertising, liability for third-party activities. Likewise, the SEC, Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Office of Foreign Assets Controls (“OFAC”), as well as foreign regulatory authorities, have continued to increase the enforcement of economic sanctions and trade regulations, anti-money laundering, and anti-corruption laws, across industries. As regulations continue to evolve and regulatory oversight continues to increase, we cannot guarantee that our programs and policies will be deemed compliant by all applicable regulatory authorities.

For additional information about the Regulation risks, see “Risk Factors” under the section entitled“A failure to comply with existing or new laws, rules and regulations or changes to such laws, rules and regulations and other legal uncertainties may adversely affect our business or financial results” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Corporate History, Equity Ownership and Voting Control

Tripadvisor was founded in February 2000. In April 2004, Tripadvisor was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp, or IAC. In August 2005, IAC spun-off its portfolio of travel brands, including Tripadvisor, into Expedia, at the time a separate newly-formed Delaware corporation. On December 20, 2011 Expedia completed a spin-off of Tripadvisor into a separate publicly-traded Delaware corporation. We refer to this second spin-off transaction as the “Spin-Off.” Following the Spin-Off, on December 21, 2011, Tripadvisor began trading on The Nasdaq Global Select Market, or Nasdaq, as an independent public company under the trading symbol “TRIP.”

On December 11, 2012, Liberty Interactive Corporation, or Liberty, purchased an aggregate of approximately 4.8 million shares of common stock of Tripadvisor from Barry Diller, our former Chairman of the Board of Directors and Senior Executive, and certain of his affiliates. As a result, Liberty beneficially owned approximately 18.2 million shares of our common stock and 12.8 million shares of our Class B common stock.

On August 27, 2014, the entire beneficial ownership of our common stock and Class B common stock held by Liberty was acquired by Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings, Inc., or LTRIP. Simultaneously, Liberty, LTRIP’s former parent company, distributed, by means of a dividend, to the holders of its Liberty Ventures common stock, Liberty’s entire equity interest in LTRIP. We refer to this transaction as the “Liberty Spin-Off.” As a result of the Liberty Spin-Off, effective August 27, 2014, LTRIP became a separate, publicly traded company holding 100% of Liberty’s interest in Tripadvisor.

As a result of these transactions, and as of December 31, 2024, LTRIP beneficially owned approximately 14.0 million shares of our common stock and approximately 12.8 million shares of our Class B common stock, which constitute approximately 11% of the outstanding shares of common stock and 100% of the outstanding shares of Class B common stock. Assuming the conversion of all of LTRIP’s shares of Class B common stock into common stock, LTRIP would beneficially own approximately 19% of the outstanding common stock. However, because each share of Class B common stock is entitled to ten votes per share and each share of common stock is entitled to one vote per share, LTRIP may be deemed to beneficially own equity securities representing approximately 56% of our voting power.

On December 18, 2024, the Company, LTRIP and Telluride Merger Sub Corp., a Delaware corporation (“Merger Sub”) and an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger (the “Merger Agreement”), pursuant to which, and subject to the terms and conditions, (i) Merger Sub will be merged with and into LTRIP (the “Merger”), with LTRIP surviving the Merger as the surviving corporation and an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, and (ii) immediately following the Merger, LTRIP (as the surviving corporation in the Merger) will be merged with and into TellurideSub LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and a direct wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company (“ParentSub LLC”) (such merger, the “ParentSub LLC Merger”), with ParentSub LLC surviving the ParentSub LLC Merger as the surviving company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company.

In connection with the Merger, (i) the shares of LTRIP Series A Common Stock and Series B Common Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the effective time of the Merger will be converted into the right to receive $0.2567 per share in cash (without interest), totaling approximately $20 million in the aggregate; (ii) all of the shares of LTRIP's 8% Series A Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the effective time of the Merger will be converted into the right to receive, in the aggregate, approximately $42 million in cash, without interest, and 3,037,959 validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable shares of the Company's common stock; and (iii) LTRIP's 0.50% Exchangeable Senior Debentures of approximately $330 million will be repaid in accordance with their terms. Pursuant to the Merger Agreement, the Company will provide a loan facility (the “TRIP Loan Facility”) to LTRIP of approximately $330 million, to repay LTRIP debentures prior to the closing of the Merger. The TRIP Loan Facility will be repaid on the earlier of (i) the closing of the Merger, and (ii) 15 business days after the valid termination of the Merger Agreement or (b) such later date as jointly agreed to by LTRIP and the Company.

Assets held by LTRIP substantially consist of the shares of the Company’s common stock described above. As a result, the Company views this transaction effectively as a repurchase of the Company's common stock held by LTRIP and, as such, the Merger will be substantially accounted for as a treasury stock repurchase transaction. Upon consummation of the Merger, the Company plans to retire the approximately 26.8 million shares of the Company's common stock held by LTRIP as reported on LTRIP's Form 13-D/A filed on December 20, 2024. Following the closing of the Merger, the Company will no longer have a controlling shareholder or be considered a “controlled company”.

The transaction is subject to various closing conditions, including LTRIP stockholder approval, regulatory clearances, and other customary conditions. There can be no assurance that the conditions to closing will be satisfied or that the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement will be completed on the contemplated terms or timeline, or at all.

Human Capital Management

Employees

As of December 31, 2024, the Company had approximately 2,860 employees, with approximately 60%, 35%, and 5% of employees based in Europe, the U.S., and the rest of world, respectively. Additionally, we use independent contractors to supplement our workforce. Our employees and independent contractors are subject to our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, which sets forth a commitment to operate in accordance with the highest ethical, professional, and legal standards. We believe we have good relationships with our employees and contractors, including relationships with employees represented by international works councils or other similar organizations. Our Board of Directors, Compensation Committee, and Section 16 Committee have oversight of our human capital management.

Talent Acquisition and Development

We believe our employees are essential to our success and that the Company’s success depends on our ability to attract, develop and retain key talent. The skills, experience and industry knowledge of key employees significantly benefit our operations and performance. Competition for qualified personnel is intense, particularly for software engineers, computer scientists, and other technical staff, and constrained labor markets have increased competition for personnel across other parts of our business. The Company's management and Board of Directors oversee various initiatives for talent acquisition, retention and development.

Our talent philosophy is to both develop talent from within and to strategically recruit key external talent. This approach has yielded a deep understanding, among our employee base, of our business, our products, and our customers, while adding new employees and ideas in support of our continuous improvement mindset. Our overall talent acquisition and retention strategy is designed to attract and retain qualified candidates to enable the success of the Company and achievement of our performance goals. We recruit the best people for the job without regard to gender, ethnicity or other protected traits and it is our policy to comply fully with all domestic, foreign and local laws relating to discrimination in the workplace. Our talent acquisition team uses internal and external resources to recruit highly skilled and talented workers, and we encourage employee referrals for open positions.

We support and develop our employees through global training and development programs that build and strengthen employees’ leadership and professional skills. Leadership development includes programs for new leaders as well as programs designed to support more experienced leaders. We also partner with external training organizations to help provide current and future workers with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed.

It is important that our employees represent a mix of experiences and backgrounds in order to make our company stronger, more innovative and more inclusive. Inclusion is one of our core values. Our inclusion initiatives support our goal that everyone throughout the Company is engaged in creating an inclusive workplace. We offer leadership training and support to ensure that all employees are supported in their careers. Additionally, we also support a network of active Employee Resource Groups, which are open to all employees.

Total Rewards

As part of our compensation philosophy, we believe that we must offer and maintain market competitive total rewards programs for our employees in order to attract, motivate and retain superior talent. These programs not only include base wages and incentives in support of our pay for performance culture, but also health, welfare, and retirement benefits.

We design our benefit programs to meet the needs of our employees’ health while managing program costs for escalation rates at or below industry trend factors. Our programs include but are not limited to wellness, mental health services, telemedicine, and partnerships with service providers that support diverse family-care need solutions. We continuously refine, develop and implement proactive health care strategies and solutions that allow us to enhance employee health and well-being while curbing costs.

Health and Safety

The health and safety of our employees is of utmost importance to us. We conduct regular self-assessments and audits designed to ensure compliance with our health and safety guidelines and regulatory requirements.

For additional information about Human Capital Management risks, see “Risk Factors” under the section entitled “Our future success depends on the performance of our key employees and our ability to attract, retain and engage senior management and a highly skilled workforce” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Additional Information

We maintain an Investor Relations website at http://ir.tripadvisor.com/investor-relations. Except as explicitly noted, the information on our website, as well as the websites of our various brands, is not incorporated by reference in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, or in any other filings with, or in any information furnished or submitted to, the SEC.

On our Investor Relations website (http://ir.tripadvisor.com/investor-relations), we provide our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to these reports free of charge. These reports are available on our website as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file or furnish these reports to the SEC or publish through press releases, public conference calls and certain webcasts. All documents filed electronically with the SEC (including reports, proxy and information statements and other information) are also available at www.sec.gov. Investors and others should be aware that in addition to required filings with the SEC, we use our Investor Relations website (http://ir.tripadvisor.com/investor-relations) to announce material financial information to our investors as well as communicate with the public about our company, our results of operations and other information.

We post our code of business conduct and ethics, which applies to all directors, officers, employees, contractors, and consultants, on our Investor Relations website athttp://ir.tripadvisor.com/corporate-governance. We intend to disclose any amendments or waivers of the code of ethics for our executive officers, senior financial officers or directors, on our Investor Relations website.