Tripadvisor CEO Matt Goldberg Talks Consumer Sentiment on Travel
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Consumer sentiment has been dour for several months, and we got an update on the University of Michigan's numbers. They are sinking now to a two-year low. This as the Fed's preferred measure of inflation starts to tick off.

Consumer spending coming in weaker than expected in that same report. For more insights into how the consumer is holding up, specifically through the lens of travel, let's bring Matt Goldberg into the conversation. He's the CEO of the travel platform TripAdvisor, which, well, you can book a hotel, you can book an air flight, you can book a restaurant.

And so far, from what I've heard from other companies, those bookings have actually held up pretty well. Are they holding up on your site? Well, the traveler consumer wants to continue to travel. And the discretionary category is one that they're protecting, particularly around experiences, because they want to have the next experience and not necessarily buy the next thing. So the travel consumer has been strong. And we've seen post-pandemic, there's always going to be something. And the consumer is going to continue to travel.

Where are they going, I guess? Are they taking these big bucket list trips to some far-flung places of the earth, or are they just saying, "I'm just going to drive a couple states over and go to the state park"? Well, it's everywhere. There may be some bifurcation between the upper end and the mid and lower ends, and you might make different choices. But clearly, international is holding up well. We see long haul holding up well. We've heard that from some of the airlines.

But also, if you're somebody whose pocketbook might get pinched with some of the uncertainty, you may travel, but you may think about, where am I going to go? It's closer to home. A few fewer days. You may think about how much you want to spend, but you're still going to prioritize, preserve, and defend the ability to have that experience. Is there an argument to be made that during bad economic times, sometimes people...

still make sure they have enough money to travel because it ends up being maybe one of the few things that makes them happy during bad times. Is there credence to that? - I think that's true. I wanna be logical about this. Our industry's not immune to the macro at all, right? And the consumer, when their personal balance sheet is impacted, may make different choices.

But I think you're right. They are defending experiences, travel, things to do, things that make them feel like they can get out and have fun and learn something and see the world. That's something they want to defend. A few weeks ago, we got some warnings out of the airlines. And we're going to get another update next week as one of the major airlines has an investor day. They've lowered their expectations for the year, specifically when it comes to leisure travel.

- Yeah, and you saw the same things that I saw. They talked about Q1, but they were more confident about the end of the year, and they showed some bifurcation perhaps, and talked about long haul and premium and some of the things that are happening there. You know, one of the things that we do is we built our business around experiences, and we are focused on making sure that no matter what somebody wants to do, whether it's close to home or far away, we can serve them.

'Cause you don't have to get on an airplane to have an experience. You can get in the car, you can do it down the road and you can experience the world, whether it's dining or something to do or doing a cultural immersion in your own town. - Have you had any discussions with your team or some of your colleagues in the industry about a potential shift in behavior because of what's going on in Washington? There's been anecdotal stories, we should point out, of people either

postponing overseas travel or overseas travelers postponing trips to the US because of concerns about the geopolitical relationships going on right now well obviously uncertainty and these things can can factor into all kinds of choices but you know I think that the the traveler still wants to travel and and we'll serve them wherever they want to go whether it's a iconic place and in a famous country or closer to home something to do that's immersive and experience like a farm-to-table experience yeah they will go

and do that and that's how we're trying to connect to that traveler and serve them wherever they want to go so how do you keep tripadvisor itself um competitive i mean there's a this is a very competitive business with what you do i saw you actually had a deal uh that i just read about with perplexity on the ai front the idea of making it easier for people to plan out things and we've seen a lot of people start to plan out their vacations using various ai tools

- Absolutely, well our vision is to be the most trusted source for travel and experiences. And as people start to experiment with technology and use AI, they wanna find better experiences, so discovery, they wanna plan more effectively, so seamlessly and quicker and not have to go to lots of different places.

They want trusted content and information. And we think AI will be a tailwind for us because we've got a trusted brand. We've got content and data. And we sit in the ecosystem in a place where we want to guide you and then connect you to marketplaces where, as you said, you can book a restaurant, an experience, a hotel, and have that moment that is transformative. If people are looking, if times are hard and people are looking for more discounts or deals,

Can they find that through you? Absolutely. Well, the history of TripAdvisor is clearly we've been a place you can go to compare pricing, and we think that that's very interesting. It's also a place where we want to reward members who come to us and book one of these things. We're going to put a membership together to reward you. So when you book, you get rewards in a wallet that you can use across categories. So we actually think that that will be very attractive and get many more people coming to us direct. Matt, appreciate you stopping by. Matt Goldberg is the CEO of TripAdvisor.

Thank you.

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