By Seb Joseph  •  July 1, 2025  •

“Google’s AI mode in search is going to eat large chunks of search,” said Matthew Dacey, CMO at Tripadvisor. “It’s going to happen fast as they [Google] push it and more people subsequently adopt it.”

So far that change hasn’t landed with full force on the travel firm. According to Statisita, monthly visits hovered between 146 million and 169 million in early 2023. By February 2025, that number had dropped to around 120 million. 

Yes, some of that dip chimes with the rollout of AI Overviews – Google’s move to surface answers directly in search results. But the story behind Tripadvisor’s traffic shift is bigger than any one feature. In fact, it’s part of a longer arc: the way people find information is changing. Tripadvisor, like everyone else, is learning how to meet them there. 

For Dacey, that starts with repositioning Tripadvisor not just as a utility but as a daily habit – something people turn to regularly, whether they’re browsing, planning or already en route to a holiday. Less search, more morning ritual. 

Delivering on that vision comes down to three things: improving the app experience, refreshing the membership program and moving Tripadvisor higher up the funnel – turning the service into a starting point, not just a step along the way. 

If it works, the hope is that it will drive more logged-in behavior, particularly on the app.

“Right now we have over 100 million active member accounts but not many of them are using the app,” said Dacey. 

That’s where AI comes in. Tripadvisor is building features to anticipate what travelers need before they ask, using the details they share when they begin planning or booking a trip. With that context, the app can push personalized recommendations at just the right moment.

Or as Dacey put it:  “All of our push notifications that go out can be those questions that travellers might be asking and served to them using AI based on the user-generated content on our site. It’s contextual information for exactly what’s on someone’s mind.”

A new brand campaign is meant to help land that message. Launching this month, it will mark Tripadvisor’s 25th anniversary while cementing the brand as a direct planning destination – not just a Google link to the results. 

“The way I’d describe what we’re doing is two things: how do we try and be more direct with people and then on the other hand it’s about how we show up where people actually are,” he continued. 

One of those places is Perplexity. Tripadvisor’s partnership with the AI search startup, announced earlier this year, lets Perplexity tap into behavioral and preference data that traditional search engines typically can’t access. In return, Tripadvisor’s curated hotel lists appear within Perplexity’s summaries. 

Six months in, Dacey said the results are promising – though he didn’t share details. Tripadvisor has said the deal is bringing in more high-intent users, particularly those ready to book.

Eventually, this partnership will expand to include restaurants and experiences. The playbook: generate revenue, drive qualified traffic and carve out a presence in AI-powered discovery environments.

“What tends to work in these environments is longer queries so we’re in a good position at Tripadvisor because longer queries for specific use cases will always find their way to interesting content,” said Dacey. “The question for us then is how do we get credit for that and how we translate that influence into something tangible on our side.”

That optimism points to a larger dynamic. Brands like Tripadvisor may be better positioned than publishers in the AI era. For one, they’re not monetizing pageviews the same way. They can afford to lose some traffic without losing revenue. And unlike publishers, they can shift ad dollars – moving spend into performance or partnership to make up for what’s lost in search.

That’s not to say CMOs like Dacey aren’t concerned. They are. But they also have more options. 

“Of course, advertisers are going to feel second-order effects of traffic from search going down like CPCs going up but it’s not comparable to publishers who view that traffic as their lifeblood,” said Tim Hussain, co-founder of AI consulting firm Signal42. “A CMO can always reallocate that money into other channels and escape it – well to a point.”

https://digiday.com/?p=582234