“TRIPADVISOR” LAYS OFF A QUARTER OF ITS STAFF

The “TripAdvisor” company, the owner of a popular website and a mobile app for travelling, has decided to lay off 25% of its staff. This means that about 900 employees of the company will found themselves at the labor exchange. The reason for such a decision is obvious: the demand for travel and the need to plan a vacation, to book hotels and choose the places in the tourist areas are practically reduced to zero.

The founder of the company and one of its owners, Stephen Kaufer, said in his personal blog that the company was forced to undertake the cuts because of an epidemic that hit the entire tourism business infrastructure. Will the company be able to achieve “significant cost savings,” as Kaufer describes it? And where exactly does the CEO plan to direct the company's activities at the present time?

According to Kaufer, a significant part of the workers, who will not be laid off, will receive reduced salaries and will have to work on a reduced schedule throughout the summer months.

As the founder of the “TripAdvisor” notes, the company is public and therefore the burden of responsibility for the adaptation and development of the company forces it to confront external circumstances in this way.

We should recall that “TripAdvisor” is one of the most popular travel websites, which allows the customers to make a travel plan to different countries of the world. The content of the website is filled by the users themselves, and monetization is ensured by the advertisements. 

The app and the website are being operated in 45 countries and are supported in 25 languages, including Russian.

In terms of the number of unique visitors, the website serves 315 million people per month; more than 200 million people left reviews about the trips on the website. At the moment, about 70 million users are registered on the service.

Previously, the company hoped that it would not have to take such drastic measures and lay off a quarter of its employees. As the situation, related to the state of a tourism market, there was an attempt to introduce saving measures, reducing various costs. In particular, discretionary expenses were reduced, and the hiring of the new employees was suspended. But these measures did not work and the management of the company took more radical steps. Can the company survive? The experts note that over the past year, its shares fell by 40%.