Advice From The Founder Of The Most Popular Travel Website In The World, TripAdvisor's Steve Kaufer.

A billion reviews and opinions can't be wrong! We chat with the founder and longtime CEO of TripAdvisor (and Viator, Cruise Critic, and dozens more companies) on the history of travel search and ratings, what's right and wrong with online search today, and whether recessionary times will bust the current travel boom. Steve Kaufer offers his insights from the top of the travel industry - and his rare personal tips for travelers. Jessica Deverson sorts the current offers to pull out amazing cruise deals from Virgin Voyages, MSC and Royal Caribbean, that include the kids - or not! (Single "solo" travelers, you are not left out either.) Finally, Mike & James go at it over when is the optimal time to arrive at the airport before your flight. It gets ugly.

All this and more, on the hot new episode of No Tourists Allowed.

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Welcome to No Tourist Allowed, a podcast where two recognized travel industry executives with a combined 69 years on the inside of travel and technology give up their secrets to the thing everyone wants to do: travel better, pay less, and see more of the world. Enjoy today's episode.

Mike Putman: Hello, I'm Mike Putman.

James Ferrara: And I'm James Ferrara. Welcome to No Tourist Allowed. This is pod number six, I think. We have a very special guest with us today, someone the industry looks toward when they think about travel and trends. We are really excited to have him with us.

The guest is Steve Kaufer. He is the founding CEO of TripAdvisor, and he has been instrumental in transforming the landscape of the travel industry in the past many years. We are so glad to have you, Steve. Welcome to the podcast.

Steve Kaufer: Well, thanks so much. Great to be here.

James Ferrara: Welcome, Steve. It's a real pleasure.

Rapid-Fire Travel Questions

Mike Putman: Steve, we always start off with our guests with rapid-fire questions. We're looking for your immediate, off-the-top-of-your-head response. It could be one word or a phrase. We’ll walk through a few questions just to get a sense of what type of traveler you are and where you like to go.

Steve, what's your favorite destination?

Steve Kaufer: My favorite destination for most of my travel would be scuba diving in the Caribbean. I know that is not an exact place, but it's the type of trip.

Mike Putman: That's good. I love that as well. If you had to pick one favorite hotel chain or an independent property to stay at, what would that be?

Steve Kaufer: In my position, even now that it's a former position, I couldn't single out one. I've stayed in many magnificent places all over the globe with amazing hospitality.

Mike Putman: Fair enough, I understand. Are you a cruiser, Steve?

Steve Kaufer: I am.

Mike Putman: What is your favorite cruise line and cruise destination?

Steve Kaufer: Even though TripAdvisor owns Cruise Critic, and we're very much in the cruising business, from personal experience I would say Royal Caribbean has been my favorite. The destination being, again, the Caribbean. I've taken a number of their cruises there. They are great with family and multi-generational activities.

Mike Putman: That's one of my favorites too. I know James loves Royal Caribbean as well.

James Ferrara: Absolutely. They have a long history and do an amazing, quality job across a broad spectrum of markets. I agree.

The Birth of TripAdvisor

Mike Putman: Steve, tell our audience how you got started in the travel business.

Steve Kaufer: It's a fun story. This was back in 1998. I was planning a vacation with my wife and I was working in a different industry. I had the typical week or two a year of vacation, so it was pretty precious.

To take your listeners way back to 1998, what did you do to plan a trip? You went to a travel agent at the corner store. We described the kind of vacation we wanted. She was very nice and suggested Playa del Carmen, a spot an hour south of Cancun in Mexico. I live in Boston, so it was a relatively straightforward trip.

We said that suited the bill: beach, warmth, and restaurants. We asked where to stay. She showed us three beautiful brochures. One was for an inexpensive resort that looked gorgeous. These were amazing pictures. The next was a moderately priced one, which also looked gorgeous. The third was a very expensive place that also had amazing pictures.

We went home to think about it. We thought, the internet is coming up, let's find some more information about these properties. I searched for the name of the property and a thousand hits came up. I clicked on the first one, all excited to read more about this resort.

Bummer. It was a travel agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, that would happily take my reservation and had a low-resolution version of the same photos that were in the brochure in front of me. It was not what I wanted. I clicked on the second and third links and found the same thing.

Eventually, and I can be a really persistent son of a gun, I finally found a personal homepage—a blog, if you will—about the trip someone had actually taken to that hotel. They had posted what they liked, what they didn't like, and their photos. Of course, these weren't touched up or staged; these were real photos.

The photos told me everything I needed to know. It was really quite crowded. The beach chairs were rusty. Let's just say it didn't match the expectations. I had been researching the cheap place, of course, because why spend more than I need to? But that research proved I did not want to stay there.

We went back, chose the mid-price range, and had a great time. My wife said on the way back, "Wouldn't it be awesome if people could find the type of information that you found online much easier?" She's the one that went to business school, not me. That was the information that swayed our decision.

I said, "Nah, I'm busy. I can't do it." But to finish the story, a year and a half later, that was still the best idea anyone had come up with. That is the idea that launched TripAdvisor.

Overcoming the "Chicken and Egg" Problem

Mike Putman: Wow, so the origination of TripAdvisor came from a nice brochure and a bad web experience. That's interesting. You had the idea, Steve, which turned out to be a billion-dollar idea. TripAdvisor is the leading review travel site in the world. How did you get from that idea in Playa del Carmen to the launching of the company?

Steve Kaufer: Let me just add a little postscript. TripAdvisor is the leading travel review site, but by way of traffic, it is also the most popular travel site period. There was a point where if you added up the top ten airlines combined, TripAdvisor still had more monthly visitors.

It is certainly bigger than many of the other names people know. We've turned it into a site that literally billions of people have now visited.

Regarding how it went from an idea to a business: this would be February of 2000. Myself, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka incorporated as co-founders. We raised a little bit of money—$1.2 million if I recall—and set out to build a travel search engine. We wanted a site where you could find the good, the bad, and everything in between about where to go, where to stay, and what to do.

It started by focusing on US destinations in English. That was a big market, but a small part of the global market. Then we had multiple challenges. How do we brand ourselves? How does anyone find us? How do we make money? We had to figure that one out.

As a review site, how do you get someone to write a review on a big empty page? Who wants to write a review on an empty site? On the flip side, who wants to research a vacation on a site that has no reviews? In internet marketplaces, we call that the chicken and the egg problem.

Mike Putman: How did you overcome that problem?

Steve Kaufer: We chose an approach focused around a B2B business model. We were going to sell our services to businesses. Eventually, we had to pivot to be a consumer site, which is the TripAdvisor you know today. But originally, we were going to build a database of opinions and sell that information to businesses who would distribute it.

If you think about Expedia or Yahoo Travel back in the day, those were big sites with a lot of visitors, but they didn't really have opinionated information. We were going to collect information from the internet and license it to them.

To solve the chicken and egg problem, before we asked people to write reviews, we found reviews that were already written on the web. With our technical search capabilities, we would find a paragraph from a Lonely Planet author or a New York Times piece about Maui.

If it was written, published, and online, we would find it. We were going to sell Expedia and Yahoo Travel a link to that page. That business model just didn't work. Our potential clients were not interested.

What we ended up doing was turning our demo site into the TripAdvisor consumer site to attract our own audience. We already had 50,000 hotels on our platform and a lot of good research information. If you wanted to stay in Boston, we had a list of hotels ranked based on information we found on the web. It was instantly useful on day one.

In year two, we added the button that said "write your own review." Sure enough, a bunch of people were perfectly happy to do that. Fortunately for us, most people had nice things to say as opposed to just using the site to rant. It became an enjoyable site to browse and one that would truly help steer travelers in the right direction.

Global Expansion and Scaling

Mike Putman: A great beginning to a great company. Let's roll the clock forward ten years to 2010. What changes took place between the beginning and that point?

Steve Kaufer: From a product perspective, the biggest change was how we served the audience. We expanded from US travelers to English speakers going to the Caribbean, then to Europe, and then to the rest of the world.

It's a difficult task to expand geographically because our goal is to list every hotel, every bed and breakfast, every campground, and every hostel. As we expanded into Japan, we found a lodging type called a Ryokan. We didn't even know what it was. We had to add it as a lodging type.

Global expansion was the challenge of finding all the places open for business. That is doable in hotels, but still a work in progress in restaurants. There are way more restaurants than hotels. TripAdvisor doesn't just list places that pay us a subscription fee; we are free for every establishment to be listed on.

We then had to expand our capabilities to process reviews in different languages. We were up to 20 or 30 different languages at one point. That geographic and language expansion was a huge push in the first ten years. Pre-pandemic, we were doing north of 400 million visitors each and every month.

When you are helping between one to two billion people a year, it becomes a huge responsibility to get it right. We want to make sure restaurants are open and hotels are living up to their reputation. We want to provide better itineraries.

Diversification and Acquisitions

The second decade was an expansion of the things we did. The first decade was mostly helping book a hotel room and airfare. The second decade became about helping you book the right attraction and find the right thing to do. We also looked at restaurants with our relationship with OpenTable in the US, and our own reservation system with TheFork in Europe. Along the way, we also acquired a couple of dozen companies to help us achieve product or market reach.

Mike Putman: It's interesting. Last November, James and I had a conference in Spain. I'm a Michelin-star restaurant fan and I love those great dining experiences. While in Spain, I went to book some and I was redirected to TheFork, which I'd never heard of as an American. I was happy to find out that's a TripAdvisor property. It worked out fantastically and made making reservations very easy.

Steve mentioned Cruise Critic, which is a well-known site for information and opinions about cruise lines. What else? Steve, I think SeatGuru too?

Steve Kaufer: Yes, SeatGuru is a site we bought many years ago. Viator is certainly the biggest other brand, and that brand does a phenomenal job helping users find things to do and book them at a great price.

When we researched our audiences, we found lots of people were using TripAdvisor for hotels. They would click off and book on Expedia or Hilton. Then we would hear about how they came back and the hotel was magnificent, but they wished they had known they needed to book an activity in advance.

We thought to ourselves, 95% of people go on vacation to experience the place through food, adventure, or museums. The hotel is important and can ruin a trip, but most wonderful vacations people tell me about do not end with "the hotel was amazing." It might be a sentence in the middle, but the story is about what they were doing.

We set out to tackle that problem. How can we help people find amazing things to do and get an awesome private tour guide? We want them to take a cooking class in an open market in Rome rather than standing in a line by themselves.

Travel agents know how important it is to plan many days of the vacation in advance. Consumers sometimes do and sometimes don't. That can make or break a trip. So, we bought the company Viator and built up the amount of bookable things to do on TripAdvisor.

Viator, Cruise Critic, and TheFork became the next three biggest global brands for us.

The Challenge of Big Tech Competition

Mike Putman: As a leader, Steve, what was the biggest headwind you faced, whether corporately or trying to meet the demands of a changing consumer?

Steve Kaufer: It’s such a good question. Creating the product value proposition for the consumer was not the biggest challenge. While there is so much more TripAdvisor could do with personalization, what we provide today is pretty amazing and has lasted 22 years.

The biggest challenge of the business has been what Google has done in the internet space. They built a marvelous search engine, but as their ambitions have grown, they have tried to get into many other areas like travel. They became a very direct competitor to TripAdvisor.

They successfully trained millions of people to start on the Google search engine. You might type "best hotels in Boston," and Google will show you a few ads and then take up almost the rest of the page promoting their own offerings. It didn't used to be that way. It used to be three paid links, and then they would let the best of the web surface without preferencing their own stuff.

When one company has such a dominant position controlling what people see, it puts a lid on how competitive anyone else can be. It stifles innovation because Google doesn't choose to give your site airtime, no matter how good it is.

I find myself challenged in the tense I use because your listeners should know I stepped down as CEO in early July of 2022. I am still getting used to referring to TripAdvisor as a separate company.

Mike Putman: You'll never be able to shake that, Steve. When you birth something that's had so much global success, TripAdvisor is always going to be your baby.

James Ferrara: We're always going to cut you a little slack on that, Steve.

Steve Kaufer: Like a child that has grown up, the company has certainly flourished. I couldn't be more proud of everything the company has done to improve hospitality and help small businesses reach a global audience. I feel extremely lucky that we found a wonderfully talented guy, Matt Goldberg, as the new CEO. I feel very good about handing my baby over to Matt.

James Ferrara: I think your concern about Google as a gatekeeper is well-founded. It applies across our lives in general. We have more information than we've ever had, and that information gives us the opportunity to know things about destinations. It’s very precious and we don't want to lose it.

Mike Putman: I definitely have concerns about Google’s step into our sandbox. As a user, I love Google. But when someone controls that amount of traffic, it becomes problematic when they become a commercial provider as well. That's a warning everyone in the travel industry understands.

Steve Kaufer: It's frustrating when someone types "TripAdvisor" into Google and I have to buy my own name because my competitors might choose to buy it. The same case for Marriott; you type in "Marriott New York" and ads other than Marriott can show up. Marriott is then forced to buy their own keyword. Google isn't providing value in the industry that way. Fortunately, Europe has been taking the lead on some anti-competitive behaviors and there’s some energy in the U.S. around some of those practices.

The Next Chapter for Steve Kaufer

Mike Putman: Let's switch gears. As the leader of TripAdvisor, what was your personal favorite part of the business?

Steve Kaufer: Product. Definitively. I wake up and think about how this site can do a better job serving our travelers. While we have clients that pay us, it's really the traveler I think of first. If we have more travelers falling in love with the site and telling their friends about an amazing restaurant they discovered, we’ve got a customer for life.

I always meet people who say they never plan a trip without using TripAdvisor. I think about how to get that to be two out of three people. Not everyone uses it as a habit. Not everyone has the app on their phone, but why not? Aren't you going to be looking for a nearby restaurant or something to do with a free afternoon? We want people opening our app as opposed to typing "things to do near me" into Google.

Mike Putman: Steve, let's roll the clock forward to today. What's in store for Steve Kaufer going forward?

Steve Kaufer: Fun question. I've been answering that a lot recently. I voluntarily left an amazing job after a 22-year run. I realize I am interested in a new challenge. While I love the industry and it's filled with amazing people, I have another itch to scratch.

I don't think it's going to be in travel and hospitality because I want to explore something new. I'm a curious but focused personality. For two decades I was focused on TripAdvisor. Now I'm poking my head up and seeing cool stuff with AI, a biotech revolution, and augmented reality.

Other people talk about the metaverse and NFTs; I’m not personally excited about those. But I look around at things that can honestly be labeled disruptive. I want to go find a new idea and build something from scratch. Those things take five to ten years. If I hit the beach at 70, then now's the time to go do one more thing.

Mike Putman: Do not open a restaurant, Steve. That’s my only personal advice.

Steve Kaufer: Been there, done that. I promise you I’m not opening a restaurant.

Expert Advice and Industry Insights

James Ferrara: Before we lose you too far from the travel industry, we would love for you to join the ethos of this podcast. We try to give our listeners some hacks or advice for how to make their travel smoother and more authentic. Anything you want to share with our listeners?

Steve Kaufer: My favorite tip may sound self-serving, but it's true and helpful. I reach into the TripAdvisor forums frequently. If I'm going to Belize for scuba diving, I reach into the Belize forums and ask about dive sites and resorts. The people who respond do so because they love their location.

The destination experts can give you tips that don't make it into reviews or glossy articles. On TripAdvisor, no matter how random the question is, the odds are high you're going to get an answer within 24 hours. My father-in-law is a big opera fan and wanted to score tickets in Italy. I had no idea, but I posted in the forums and 24 hours later had a great answer.

The tip is that it pays to plan a chunk of your trip in advance. If you don't know what to do, you can ask in the forums and get amazing tips.

My second one is totally personal. As I'm going across multiple time zones, the moment I get on the airplane, I set my watch to the new time zone. My mind psychologically starts to adapt to the new time zone to help with jet lag.

Mike Putman: Great tip. Years ago, I got a book called *The Jet Lag Diet*. It was supposedly the idea Ronald Reagan used to travel internationally. It included your idea of setting watches ahead of time, but also manipulating light in the room and eating carbohydrates at the appropriate time to change your sleep cycle. It's brutal if you don't do some preparation.

James Ferrara: Mike, you did us a real service bringing Steve along. Steve, it really is an honor to speak to you. I'm a little sad we're going to lose you to something else, but I know you're never really going to leave us.

Steve Kaufer: I have a small continuing relationship with TripAdvisor for the next couple of years, so my emails will still work. But I love the travel industry. COVID caused people to realize how important travel was for them.

I think we're going to end up at a higher level than where we were because people had two years of experiencing what it's like not to be able to go anywhere. Travel is off to the races in most parts of the world and it's going to continue that way. It is a great time to be in travel.

James Ferrara: I'm happy to say that I have 75,000 travel agents under contract around the world, and Mike has millions of travel club customers. Both of our companies rely heavily on TripAdvisor and Viator. We've built technology that brings Viator products to our agents so they can put together full travel experiences. It's a really great tool.

Steve Kaufer: Well, thank you for that. I've met more than a handful of travel agents who use the forums tip I shared. I was going on a trip using an agent and they sent me links to TripAdvisor forums for a question I had. I thought it was very nice for them to reference the site. A good agent provides a valuable service by turning a ton of information into a specific itinerary.

Travel Deals with Jessica Deverson

Mike Putman: It's been great having you today. We are really pleased to have our deals expert, Jessica Deverson, join us again this week. Jessica, how are you?

Jessica Deverson: Doing well, trying to get over a little cold, but I'm hanging in there. How are you?

Mike Putman: Doing great. We just had an awesome guest, Steve Kaufer. I know our listeners look forward to your segment each week. What kind of deals do you have for us?

Jessica Deverson: This week I have three very value-inclusive offers for you. Starting with Royalton Grenada. This is a great deal because you can get exclusive perks at Royalton Grenada Resort, which is part of Blue Diamond Resorts.

This resort is five-star luxury and very family-friendly. Typically you get one or the other—an upscale resort that looks down their nose at kids, or a family-friendly resort where you lose the luxury. This is a nice combination. If you book four or more nights, you’ll get exclusive perks like a $200 travel credit, up to a $600 resort credit, and your first child and teen stay free.

James Ferrara: That's an interesting marketing concept. I've heard of children staying free, but first child and teen? That's unusual.

Jessica Deverson: You must book with a travel advisor to receive these perks. When you book with your advisor, they book through an industry partner and the extras are applied. You can visit the website and the offer won't be there; you have to go to your travel advisor.

There's a misconception that working with a travel advisor costs more. Travel agents typically don't cost more. Instead, they're getting you a better offer and you're supporting a small business.

Next up, we have Virgin Voyages. They’ve recently updated their guidelines, so they no longer require COVID testing in order to board. You still need the vaccination, but you won't be bothered with the testing. And in other great news: no kids allowed.

James Ferrara: Most major cruise lines made that announcement that we no longer need to test. It was a pain in the neck to test a couple of days before the cruise. For right now, the important thing is it removes one of those hassles.

Jessica Deverson: Next up, we have Virgin Voyages has a super-yacht inspired design. They have a focus on wellness, and they even have an onboard tattoo artist. If you book the first passenger, you get 50% off the second passenger, and an extra $100 toward your prepaid bar tab.

Included in every Virgin Voyages sailing is $600 in value for tips, Wi-Fi, fitness classes, and restaurants. This offer runs for all of August. There's a four-night Caribbean sailing starting from $438 per person. They stop at the beach club in Bimini, which looks incredible.

Last but not least, we have MSC Cruises. They have a whole lineup of offers right now. MSC is one of the biggest and oldest cruise lines in the world. Currently, they have a $500 onboard credit and kids sail free on a ton of itineraries.

They also offer flexible booking changes. You can change your booking up to 48 hours prior to departure. I think that peace of mind is very valuable.

Mike Putman: I took advantage of that in July when my wife and child tested positive for COVID. We had to cancel our MSC cruise on the MSC Divina just 48 hours in advance, and they gave us a full refund.

James Ferrara: MSC is an Italian-inspired company. The new ships for the U.S. market are very Americanized, though they have that Italian flair. They are fighting for market share, so they are being extremely promotional to win over first-time customers.

Jessica Deverson: One more thing: Last but not least, we have MSC Cruises has a solo traveler offer. Typically solo guests pay up to two times the fare. With MSC's limited-time offer, solo travelers can save 80% off the single supplement fee.

Finally, to recognize healthcare workers, MSC is offering a discount of up to 10% off the cruise fare to healthcare professionals and their families. This is a standing offer from now on.

Mike Putman: Jessica, thanks so much for joining us and sharing those deals.

Jessica Deverson: Thanks for having me. Get out in the sun!

The Great Airport Arrival Debate

James Ferrara: Mike, we ask our guests for advice all the time. We should share some of our own. Not long ago, we talked about advice for the airport. I realized we have really different views on when to arrive.

Mike Putman: Yes, my view is right and yours is wrong. I appreciate my personal time and others find sitting around an airport enjoyable. I just came back from a golf trip in St Andrews. I had arranged the transfers back to Edinburgh Airport. St Andrews is about an hour and ten minutes away. I had the pickup staged to get the guys there two hours ahead of time.

Edinburgh Airport is small, with maybe ten or twelve gates. But several of the guys said two hours was not enough. They were much like James and felt they needed to be there four hours in advance.

James Ferrara: I'm thinking about it a different way. If you're traveling internationally, airlines recommend three hours before departure. For domestic, they say two hours. I know people who cut it short and run to the gate as they're closing the door, but it’s stressful.

I was a Scoutmaster, so I believe in being prepared. I once showed up for a flight and the country had changed its COVID requirements overnight. Because I was there three hours early, I was able to get tested, wait for results, and still get through security and have breakfast without panicking.

Also, I like airports. They've gotten much nicer. I live in the New York area and they’ve redone all the airports with fancy restaurants and shopping. I can easily kill an extra hour enjoyably.

Mike Putman: I'll tell you, for a while I was living in Asheville, North Carolina, and I lived within half a mile of the airport. I was commuting to Dallas three times a month. I had it so honed in that I could leave my front door 35 minutes before the flight left. I’d be at the gate 15 minutes before the flight took off. I did that over and over and never had problems.

You can spend your life hanging out at the airport, or you can do like me and sleep in and enjoy your life. I have traveled extensively and I have missed only one flight in my life due to being late.

James Ferrara: What you described is the O.J. Simpson sprint. I don't even like airport lounges to be honest with you. I'm bored in there. I'd rather wander around the airport and look at the museums and displays. I'm a bit of an airport nerd.

Podcast Wrap-Up

Mike Putman: It’s been a great podcast. We were blessed to have Steve Kaufer and Jessica Deverson. Hopefully our listeners enjoyed it.

James Ferrara: I certainly have. Thanks everyone for being with us. Remember, no tourists allowed. See you next week.