TripAdvisor's mission is to empower travelers around the globe with the insights that they need to confidently explore and experience our world. Co-founder and CEO Steve Kaufer has achieved this mission on a grand scale—with more than 455 million monthly users and 570 million unbiased reviews by travelers across the globe. As the world's largest travel site, TripAdvisor offers travelers advice, travel choices, planning features, and seamless links to booking tools that check hundreds of websites to find the best hotel prices.

Growth of this nature hasn't happened without careful management—planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. As a technology company in a cutthroat and hyper changing travel industry, TripAdvisor settles for hiring nothing less than the best talent in each department throughout the organization—and much care and consideration are taken to manage its coveted base of employees.

The company's informal and internal motto, “Speed Wins,” is also part of its rich culture, which promotes finding successful outcomes while sponsoring novelty, new ideas, and even failure. Tolerance for failure, not out of sloppiness but from outcomes that just didn't work out, is the way TripAdvisor's management team subscribes to learning—which results in better long-term decision making.

TripAdvisor's top leaders subscribe to responsiveness and speed, with the belief that if a response isn't quick and immediate, decay can set in. As part of its “Speed Wins” culture, TripAdvisor hires employees in search of a less bureaucratic company environment who can move and execute quickly. With 3,000 employees worldwide, getting everyone on the same page to understand the company's mission, business objectives, and how each job connects to its mission can be a challenge. TripAdvisor's top management team invests a huge amount of time thinking about creating alignment by communicating consistently, constantly, and with candor and transparency.

TripAdvisor's management team is organized on a functional basis—according to the traditional functions of sales & marketing, product, engineering, and finance. In fact, TripAdvisor's managers, fearless of change, are well versed in a wide variety of disciplines when it comes to managing their individual departments while viewing the changing travel space on a holistic basis. A common characteristic of all managers is the willingness and openness to change and to question the way things have been done in the past—while focusing on what can be done differently in the future.

TripAdvisor's business is built upon travelers sharing candid, transparent, and unbiased reviews with other travelers. Throughout its community of users, the company expects trustworthy, unbiased, clear, and accurate information that represents the experiences of the travel community. Given the company's 570 million unbiased reviews, this philosophy of trust extends to the company's management and leadership philosophies. The company's leaders are focused on being inclusive, constructive, and positive.

Strategic planning is an ongoing process—particularly in the cutthroat, hi-tech travel space. Kaufer admits that the biggest change impacting his business is the way in which travelers use technology—namely, the shift to mobile devices. TripAdvisor has had to adapt to the changing nature of today's business and technology environment.

This includes investing in in-destination functionality for their products so that people can use the TripAdvisor app not just to plan their trip but also in short bursts while they are traveling around with their mobile devices. Longer-term strategic planning efforts include virtual reality and virtual tours—where travelers can“experience” a place virtually before ever booking that trip using their beloved TripAdvisor.

Questions for Critical Thinking 

1. Using the SWOT analysis framework, discuss a few of TripAdvisor's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

2. How might TripAdvisor's mission change as Internet travel sites and competitors create intensified competition?

3. How would you describe TripAdvisor's corporate culture? Based upon what you know and with some further research, do you think the company's growth has impacted its culture?