Tripadvisor said it incurred costs of $3.3 million in the first quarter of 2026 as part of its strategy to position itself as “experiences-led and AI-enabled.”
The pre-tax restructuring and reorganizational expenses were related to employee severance and benefits in the company’s hotels and other segment, it said as it announced Q1 2026 earnings. The company said it expects the reorganization to be completed by Q4 2026.
The company said its headcount as of March 31 2026 stands at 2,555 compared to 2,770 a year ago.
Tripadvisor reported a 4% year-over-year revenue decline in Q1 to $382 million. Net loss for the quarter was $13 million, compared to $11 million in Q1 2025. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $22 million, down from almost $44 million in Q1 2025.
“We kicked off 2026 by delivering Q1 group revenue in-line and adjusted EBITDA ahead of expectations, despite the dynamic changes in the macro environment between the start and end of the period,” said Matt Goldberg, CEO of Tripadvisor Group. “In Experiences we started the quarter with accelerated growth, reflecting the strength of our combined offering and the underlying opportunity we see in the category as we continue to scale globally.”
Revenue for the experiences business was $168 million, up 4% year over year. Experience bookings increased approximately 11% to 5.6 million in the period and gross bookings value reached $1.2 billion, up 13% year over year.
Tripadvisor reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $19 million for experiences in Q1 versus a loss of $14 million year over year.
AI updates
Regarding the company's latest AI developments Goldberg said it had established a strong foundation in 2025 through partnerships with major platforms including Amazon, OpenAI, Microsoft and Perplexity. Most recently it sealed a deal with Anthropic and launched apps for both Viator and Tripadvisor on Claude.
He added that the company is in conversation with AI partners about what more it can offer through its data, which he described as "valuable and incremental."
Goldberg also said the company is considering letting AI platforms train on its data.
"That hasn't been a part of our relationship in the past. We are looking at different business models that could make sense and different objective functions. We've got good conversations going. We think we could do something better and bigger with one or more of these," he said.
The Tripadvisor CEO also touched on OpenAI's recently launched advertising format and said the company was a test partner. Volumes are small, he said, but the channel is interesting.
"We'll continue to test and scale as with any other high-potential platform. We think that there's a real opportunity to monetize by bringing our market leading experiences inventory into these channels and really drive both volume of demand and conversion, given the intent."
Hotel +
In its hotels and other business unit, revenue was down 22% to $158 million. Hotels revenue for the first quarter was $114 million, down 23% year over year.
Media and advertising revenue for the first quarter was $28 million, a decline of 9% versus the same period in 2025. Other revenue in Q1 was $15.5 million, down 13% year over year.
Adjusted EBITDA for the period was $37 million versus adjusted EBITDA of $61 million, or 31.2% of revenue year over year.
Marketing costs in the quarter increased to almost $178 million, up from $172 million year over year.