The travel and tourism industry was one of the hardest-hit industries by the COVID-19 pandemic and the world’s most visited travel and tourism website was not spared. TripAdvisor had one of its worst years and experienced a historic drop in revenue. According to data presented by TradingPlatforms.com, TripAdvisor experienced a 61% YoY decrease in revenue in 2020, a loss of almost a billion dollars in one year.
Lockdowns Crippled Global Mobility Dealing Massive Blow To The Tourism Industry
At the beginning of 2020 countries around the would shut their borders in an attempt to mitigate the already devastating effects of COVID-19, crippling the strong momentum of the tourism industry. Tripadvisor, one of the most popular travel booking and accommodations websites globally, was not immune to the effects of the pandemic and suffered tremendous losses in 2020.
Since 2014, Tripadvisor and the travel industry in general, have been trending upwards in many economic and financial metrics. That year marked the first time Tripadvisor earned more than $1B in revenue, a figure it has not gone below of until the events of 2020. Tripadvisor posted revenues of $604M in 2020, almost $1B less than 2019’s $1.56B revenue. This is a 61% YoY drop from 2019 and nearly a 62% drop from the record high of $1.61B set in 2018.
The revenue set in 2020 is the lowest since 2010 when the company was merely 10 years old.
Cost Cutting Measures By Tripadvisor – Almost 40% Drop In Employees and Over 50% Drop In Spending
Tripadvisor implemented several cost-cutting measures in response to the pandemic. Selling and Marketing expenses dropped to $316M in 2020, their lowest level since 2012 and 53% lower than 2019’s figure of $672M. The company also made the difficult decision to downsize its number of employees significantly, only a year after investing in its workforce.
In 2019 Tripadvisor increased its workforce by 25% reaching a little less than 4200 employees. Workforce reductions were then introduced in 2020, with the number of employees downsized by 38.1% to just under 2600. The figure is the lowest number since 2013 and 23% less than 2018’s number, the year prior to Tripadvisor expanding its workforce.
Despite these reductions, Tripadvisor still posted a significant net loss of $289M in 2020.
