President of Viator, TRIPADVISOR INC
From Inspiration to Action – #Tripadvisor’s Strategic Shift | #Phocuswright Europe 2025
Tripadvisor Group CEO Matt Goldberg and new Viator president Pepijn Rijvers sit down for a candid conversation on the ...
About Pepijn Rijvers
Pepijn Rijvers, President of Viator at Tripadvisor, discussed the company's strategic direction and the role of artificial intelligence in travel during a conversation at Phocuswright Europe 2025. Rijvers stated that the travel industry is "dynamic" with "so much opportunity," and that the company will be "as much of an innovator as ever." He emphasized that "customer centricity and data-driven decision-making are two crucial ingredients for any successful business strategy" in travel. Rijvers said the company wants to "experiment and learn with AI, putting AI tools in the hands of every employee" to understand how the technology changes consumer behavior. He noted that "consumers coming through AI discovery are often higher intent," and that "AI favors larger trusted brands" because consumers need to trust brands that deliver good service. Rijvers described the experiences space as "still evolving with complex data models and technical challenges," but said Viator has "a massive roadmap to improve conversion through personalization, dynamic pricing, and instant gratification." He also said the company is "monetizing our data in partnerships with OpenAI and Perplexity" and that AI is "already making a financial difference."
Transcript (61 segments)
I
Interviewer0:00
Thank you. First time at Focus Right Europe, right? Unless you count the first one way back when. That's right. And first time. Okay. Well, we have a lot to get to. So, let's jump right in. You know, we were just talking about the anniversary of Focus Right that we kind of marked really last year. I know TripAdvisor turns 25 this year and you have been there about three years coming up on three years. Certainly over the history there have been some big strategic swings, some products that have come and gone. Before we dive into the specifics, so just a quick yes or no. Do you expect that the next 25 years might be a little bit more kind of stable?
M
Matt Goldberg0:37
No, not stable. No. No. Because travel is so dynamic. There's so much opportunity. Things change all the time. Keeps it more exciting and it keeps it exciting. It'll be dynamic and we will be as much of an innovator as ever.
I
Interviewer0:48
All right. Wonderful. Well, we will certainly talk about your plan for that. I know experiences are now really central to TripAdvisor's growth strategy. I need to start with asking you to complete a sentence. I chose Papine to lead Viator because I couldn't find anyone else in the world that I thought could do a better job.
M
Matt Goldberg1:09
It is literally the perfect role for Papine. He was, as I understood, unhirable. So, we did this by not hiring him to start. We just asked him to advise and then it all worked out. So, we are so excited.
I
Interviewer1:22
Okay. Well, wonderful. So, Papine, I know you spent 12 years at Booking.com. You probably know a lot of the people that you might be seeing here today. It was really during a period of hypergrowth. What are maybe just one or two things that you feel like you learned from that experience that are influencing your strategy at Viator?
P
Pepijn Rijvers1:41
Well, that's very simple. So, indeed to everybody, hello, nice to be back in the travel space. Customer centricity and data-driven decision-making I think are two crucial ingredients for any successful business strategy, certainly in a space that's as large as travel because we're talking obviously about serving millions and millions and millions of customers and all their intent and all their desires are slightly different and understanding it really, really well I think is a never-ending job.
I
Interviewer2:05
Okay, so let's talk about AI. I think there's a lot to talk about there so we want to jump into that. I know nearly 30% of TripAdvisor's revenue in 2024 was spent on marketing. But you have acknowledged that the old SEO playbook, what you've called click arbitrage, is fading. Are your partnerships with OpenAI and Perplexity indicative of your new kind of forward-thinking customer acquisition strategy?
M
Matt Goldberg2:31
I think what those two relationships among others are indicative of is our desire to experiment, to be restless, to think about fundamental innovation, where the value chain in travel is going and how we fit into it. And so what we wanted to do was to first put the tools of AI into the hands of every single employee in our company, which we've done, to get them understanding how this new technology changes their world, whether it be personally or their workflow, to watch the consumer and how they're adopting. Remember the last time you and I were on stage three years ago, ChatGPT hadn't launched yet. I know. And then it took what, two months to get to 100 million users. Then it was at 400 million at the beginning of this year. And I think it's doubled to 800 million since then. So the pace of change is so quick that we want to be experimenting and learning. So each one of those relationships, Perplexity for example, is about learning how AI-first search is going to change discovery and being there to influence it and understand how we want to position ourselves. The relationship with OpenAI is an opportunity to learn how agentic AI is going to evolve and to be there to understand what the consumer wants to do, how agents are working, how we want to think about the agentic world for our products and services, and then once we've learned to quickly and rapidly innovate and scale anything that you can share that you've already learned.
I
Interviewer3:55
I know you're in very early days.
M
Matt Goldberg3:55
Yeah, I think the first thing we've learned is that how we set ourselves up to be successful in an SEO world definitely has application to AI-first search and we are finding that we're able to take some of our understanding and learnings and experiment and get advantages. Number two, that consumers who are coming in through AI discovery are often higher intent. And so it's up to us to think about how to engage them and bring them to a natural conversion point. And so I think those two things together give me a lot of confidence that we're going to take advantage of AI in our products, in our partnerships, and certainly thinking about how to make ourselves more productive to make that a transformative moment for our company.
I
Interviewer4:38
So, you know, I know that the shift of course with AI is also affecting how travelers are discovering experiences, of course, and Viator is part of that Perplexity search experience. I was on there yesterday and looking for some things to do and when I go into Perplexity, there are options then to click through to Viator to complete that booking. Can you share anything maybe, Papine, about what you're seeing there as far as conversions?
P
Pepijn Rijvers5:07
Yeah. Also, as Matt already said, the quality of the traffic the minute it's handed over is higher than what you would generally see. And obviously, that's because many customers have already figured out what they want to do, where they want to do it, why they want to do it because of the interface that AI brings. At the same time, it's so early days for AI. It's super clear that it will impact the way that we all discover, book, consume travel, and experiences around the world. But there hasn't really yet been this kind of breakthrough moment yet for how AI will play that role. I think agentic AI is super interesting and at the same time the role that brands play such as ourselves, the role that suppliers play, the role that content plays is still very much to be determined. What we are seeing is really healthy growth. What we are seeing is really high quality. So it's really encouraging first signals I would say. And at the same time, it's off of a very small base.
M
Matt Goldberg6:08
And one thing I would add, sorry Matt, is that the power of brands quite clearly is very, very important in an AI-first world because consumers don't do a lot of the searching themselves anymore. So you need to trust in those brands that have your back, that deliver good service, that take care of your money. And in that sense, what we are seeing I think is actually AI favoring the larger trusted brands and I think this is a really good position for us to be in.
I mean, Papine since joining us has already changed the nature and quality of the debate we have as a team and we spent a week last week debating AI and where it was going to take us and how we would think about our fundamental bets in innovation and how we would put it into our planning process. And one of the things we all agree is nobody's figured it out. Right? And anybody who tells you they know where all of this is going is nuts. And we haven't figured it out. And I think the companies that are curious and experiment and willing to disrupt themselves to get to that future place are going to be the ones that do the best. And we're putting our heads together trying to figure that out every day.
I
Interviewer7:15
And how are you thinking about the work you're doing and the potential for driving customer acquisition and growth through some of these AI partnerships and AI platforms versus how much of a priority it is to try to get growth directly to tripadvisor.com?
M
Matt Goldberg7:33
Direct to our surfaces is obviously very important. Having a direct relationship is critical. So, we focus a lot on the app. We focus a lot on the marketing channels that would bring travelers direct and we focus on the product experience that would cause somebody to want to come direct and of course rewarding them through loyalty and membership. So that is important but I think if you look into the future and you think it's going to be a direct-only world, that's probably not where things are going. I think the funnel winds up in some way breaking down and we have to think about not only direct but how do we go out into the world and serve travelers wherever they are in whatever setting they want to serve and how do we take advantage of frankly the trust and authenticity that we have built in all of our products over the years to deliver a recommendation, a booking, and experience that is the best in the world that can be delivered.
I
Interviewer8:24
I mean, that word trust of course is a big one and there are some that might say that's a big question mark when it comes to AI and I've heard you use the phrase that you want TripAdvisor to be the trusted AI intermediary. Is that possible?
M
Matt Goldberg8:47
I think in a world of AI, trust becomes increasingly more rare, more precious, and more valuable. Knowing who you can trust, knowing the provenance of where that information came from. It's no more important than in the category of travel, which is a very considered purchase, where the consequences of getting it wrong can be very high, whether it's just the opportunity cost or a safety issue. So, really knowing who you can go to to trust. And so, that's why having brands and services that have a basis of trust. Our trust and safety team is one of the teams that I am most focused on preserving and enhancing and making sure that we lead in the age of AI. And so that's why we're actually ironically using AI tools to police fraud and to remove AI-written summaries and make sure that it comes from real people so that provenance actually and what we need to do is to make sure that we unleash the personalization that AI can bring, really understanding the context of a traveler and delivering the recommendation that is most relevant and most meaningful to them and if we do that everything else will work out.
I
Interviewer9:55
Are you monetizing your data in these partnerships with OpenAI and Perplexity?
M
Matt Goldberg10:01
Of course, we are. Yeah. But what I've said is we're not fixed on it has to be a headline-moving licensing deal. We're experimenting with when does it make sense to license and who would value our content and data and for what and why. We're experimenting with monetizing it on our site because that traffic is coming our way. We're experimenting with can we develop wholly new products and services where we can share revenue. Likely we're sharing the revenue because we're doing it with somebody else's assets. We're not sharing revenue from our own services. So we are being experimental and we are monetizing. I think we're one of the few companies that have talked about AI already as making a difference financially. I just haven't put a number out there, but it's probably bigger than most people think.
I
Interviewer10:45
Yeah. Well, I mean, I will say, we've certainly followed the journey from the beginning as far as your work with AI and you were one of the first to really step into that space. So I think that experimentation is clear. Pepijn, I wondered your thoughts. You know, with tools like Google Lens and ChatGPT's multimodal capabilities, we are at a point or very nearly at a point where anyone could have an AI tour guide in their pocket if you will. Is that a good thing? I mean, would you want to do a tour led by AI?
P
Pepijn Rijvers11:18
Probably yes. Because I think it would be very interesting. The question is, when you are, let's just say you are on a cultural tour, you're going to discover the Colosseum, you're going to hear the story behind the Mona Lisa or whatever it is that you're doing, something like that. AI can do a phenomenal job, I think, in making it entertaining, particularly if you would ask it to bring in and layer in some niche facts that are not necessarily known to the general public. At the same time though, what people really value in traveling is connecting with other people. Connecting with local culture, connecting and hearing stories from others from a different perspective. So I'm not entirely certain if AI will replace that. I actually quite certain it won't. At the same time, take the group of friends who's wandering the streets as you see on the picture. It's very easily you can add in augmented reality. So look around and hear stories, get insights about the environment within which you are through AI. 100%.
I
Interviewer12:18
Okay. I know this session is called Inspiration to Action and Matt, I know I've heard you talk on some of the recent earnings calls that one of the priorities for Viator is to drive more conversions. Pepijn, can you share anything? I know it's early days still for you, but anything about your roadmap for some of that?
P
Pepijn Rijvers12:37
Sure. Yeah, very happy to. What's interesting, I came in contact with the TripAdvisor team through a mutual friend who is now a CFO at TripAdvisor, Mark Nunan, who was in the Booking Holdings team when I was still at Booking and that's how we knew each other. And he said, 'Hey, you should come have a look. We've got this really fast growing business, Viator, and it's really interesting. It reminds me a little bit of the early days of Booking.com.' So I came, advised the team, and now I'm here. What's interesting indeed is that the experiences space is one fairly undefined still. What constitutes an experience is actually very much evolving and in development. The data model that sits behind each experience is very different. The information you need to know about a food tour for instance versus a group tour versus a boat rental is very different. Therefore it's a more complicated space from a technical standpoint. So acquiring the supply and having good connectivity, all those things are just a lot more technical work and that is reflective as well I think in the conversion funnel or the customer journey that we're able to build. Things like last minute availability, instant gratification, personalization, dynamic pricing, or pricing and merchandising strategies, all those things are still fairly new concepts and therefore we have a massive roadmap of research and development in front of us to develop a better converting front end. I have no doubt that we will be able to do a lot on that front. We're really rallying all resources behind that. That is one part. Second, I think that also from a globalization standpoint there's an enormous opportunity. I don't think that there is yet a single platform that has established real high volume leadership. We have really strong market leaders like Viator for instance. At the same time, in order to leverage and benefit as much as you can from your technical innovation, you need as large an audience as possible. And there I think, I wouldn't say the sky is the limit, but we have an enormous runway still in front of us.
I
Interviewer14:47
Okay. So a lot on your to-do list.
P
Pepijn Rijvers14:47
Yeah. There's a lot. We're quite hungry indeed.
I
Interviewer14:54
Yeah. It's been something to watch. I mean, you can feel the pace of change, you can feel the energy, and you can feel the impact. It's great. Papine, keep going.
P
Pepijn Rijvers15:00
Yeah, I will. No worries. Let's kick ass.
I
Interviewer15:04
So, Matt, a somewhat similar question for you on this inspiration to action theme here. You have said that TripAdvisor's goal is to close the loop there. Where have you made the most progress and what's still missing? I know you now have the hotel bookings with HTS.
M
Matt Goldberg15:19
I don't specifically remember making that statement, but I'm guessing it would have been related to the hotel category. And one of the great things about TripAdvisor, the brand and the service that people are familiar with, is that it's a cross-category opportunity. It has this incredible brand awareness and trust. It has a tremendous content asset. It has an unparalleled data asset. And if you can bring those together, you can do personalization and recommendations that drive people to action. And so in the hotel category, when you're focused on a particular monetization model, which is about bringing an audience onto the site and then sending them off as quickly as possible and you're just an intermediary and you're just focusing on the spread, that's not necessarily customer focused. But if you can focus on the customer and give them that recommendation, allow them to do the booking as we're doing in our app, and then reward that booking and then give them a reason to return, certainly to review, but also to do the next booking. That is an opportunity to close the loop. And what we've learned is that when people do that, they're more likely to return. They're more likely to leave photos and reviews. They're more likely to book an experience. It goes the other way as well. If you book an experience, you are more likely to book a hotel. So we do think that bringing together categories like accommodation, experiences, and dining together can give a very holistic view and that can help you close the loop as you said.
I
Interviewer16:46
Yeah. I mean, so is there an opportunity then to even connect all of that even more? You know, someone goes and books a hotel and then you could say, 'Hey, here's a food tour that meets right outside your lobby.'
P
Pepijn Rijvers17:00
100%. Let's be super clear about it. What AI will certainly do is raise customer expectations. Customer expectations for friction removal, for contextual understanding, for proactivity, for recommendation quality, all those things and then doing so in quite a rich UI and quite an information-rich dialogue maybe even. And therefore we also need to up our game and really understand how can we help travelers experience the world better. And particularly given all TripAdvisor's assets on all the various categories, more than 5 million merchants that are local across many different categories, obviously restaurants, hotels, tours and activities, but also venues, concert halls, bars, snooker ranges, you name it. So all these things are actually relevant when travelers want to explore a city, want to really consume the destination to its fullest. And if you layer on community, if you layer on insights from people like you, then that can be a very powerful value proposition to customers.
I
Interviewer18:05
Yeah. I mean, we're moving from one-size-fits-all to much more relevant and personalized. And one of the reasons I wanted to be here with Papine today was I wanted to introduce you all to this guy because he doesn't go out much and do this kind of stuff. Thank you, Papine, for sitting here with me. But as importantly, experiences is increasingly becoming central to our group. We're shifting in some ways from being a generalist travel business that was focused on media economics to being more experiences centric, cross-category, and being marketplace fueled. And it's interesting because last year 56% of our revenue came from marketplaces and actually double digit percentage of our profit as well because all of our businesses are delivering profit. So, as we make this transition and transformation, I think it allows us to set up really well for what travelers want. So, I want to talk about when we start to talk about what travelers want, this is kind of a nice transition here. I recall that when we talked in 2022, you were not a fan of TripAdvisor Plus that was in place at the time, a paid subscription program. You now have your free membership. I have an account. I guess I'm a member and just Tuesday to yesterday, I got an email. Yeah, I know. Said yes, I'm sure you do know that something new is coming in July. Can you tell us anything about what is coming?
M
Matt Goldberg19:23
So good at trying to get to that. I promised the team I wouldn't pre-launch. And I do want to say I came in on TripAdvisor Plus having been not quite what everybody expected. I don't want to say I wasn't a fan because I didn't come in negative. I came in curious, what is this thing? And what I said back then is it's jarring to start with 'Hey, pay us a hundred bucks' even though it was a really good value proposition. I think what's more interesting is to turn free membership into a reason for coming and engaging and spending more time with us. And part of that will be rewards across category. Part of that will be thinking about how you get rewarded when you engage, like a review or something like that. It could be any different actions that you take that could be rewarded. We increasingly think about TripAdvisor as being a really interesting earn and burn opportunity. And I think we will experiment with that. There will be opportunities starting with the traveler to make sure that it is a good experience, a wallet that can be used across categories. We could think about the membership and how it extends beyond the TripAdvisor brand into other brands. There's a lot of opportunity ahead, but in July, we're going to say formally what it is and we're really excited to get that out there.
I
Interviewer20:40
Okay. Hey, I'll look for that email. So, but you know, would you say is brand loyalty really relevant to the next generation of travelers, the younger generations that are coming up, or is it more about platform agnostic rewards and perks?
M
Matt Goldberg20:51
I wouldn't say brand loyalty. I think brand trust, but it's nice if I'm trusting you and I'm giving you my time and attention to be acknowledged for that, to be rewarded for that, to turn that into a multi-dimensional relationship rather than a transactional one. And really thinking about what that means as a company or a brand. I think in a world that has really focused on dopamine, we don't want to focus on dopamine. We want to focus on, I don't know, oxytocin. We want to focus on what makes you feel more fulfilled. And as a human changes through that experience. We talk a lot about that. What do you think, Papine?
P
Pepijn Rijvers21:35
Yeah. I was thinking about your analogy there for a second. And I'm curious how Viator can fit into this membership model.
M
Matt Goldberg21:49
Well, Viator is a marketplace of over 400,000 different experiences around the world. That is a role that Viator will play also in the membership program across the brands. We're indeed looking for ways on how earn and burn could play a role in keeping customers engaged. But I wanted to respond to what you said on brand loyalty. The combination of brand and loyalty is very interesting because when people say brand, typically it also involves a lot of advertising. It involves the things that we see above the line in the outside world. And when you talk about loyalty, I think people tend to be loyal to a brand, particularly in the travel space, when the brand has really created value for them. And the value typically, in my mind at least, really sits in removing friction from my ability to experience the world and explore the world. And therefore, where I think we've got a job set out for us is to make sure that we add more value, meaning we remove more friction for customers than anyone else. And as a result, we will see their loyalty to the brand and then that builds the trust, that builds the repeat business, that builds a free traffic profile, that builds good unit economics, and that builds the opportunity to invest. So, I think there you're seeing a little bit of the strategic contours of how we plan to play that game.
I
Interviewer23:08
So, I do have to ask about Airbnb experiences and your take on that. I heard you recently at a financial event you said that you would consider a partnership between Viator and Airbnb. First for you, Pepijn, how do you think about Airbnb? Do you think competition, collaboration, or something in between?
P
Pepijn Rijvers23:29
Yeah. Well, the travel space is a co-opetition space. I wouldn't be able to call out anyone specifically as purely a competitor. Neither purely a partner. Airbnb, phenomenal brand, a phenomenal brand promise, phenomenal loyalty, a phenomenal traffic profile of experience seekers I would say, and therefore them launching into experiences is something I understand. The difficulty with the Airbnb brand is it also has this element of uniqueness. And I think that even though what we all maybe aspire to in our Instagram storytelling is to do that unique thing, 'So here I am with this particular chef at this particular super nice outside terrace of this beautiful palazzo somewhere having this great experience,' that's what we hero. If we look at what the majority of travel actions though are, when visiting Paris, we go to the Eiffel Tower, we go see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. And therefore, volume and quality is where I would play. So there's in my mind at least is not necessarily fully set up for true scale. On a partnership side, we own Bókun, which is a reservation technology platform. Many operators use it. Bókun is integrated into Airbnb. So we offer the piping and the connectivity. And I'm very happily collaborating with Airbnb. I think the audiences are incremental in nature and also I think as a travel platform we owe to our operators to make sure that we get as much demand for them as we possibly can. And I think we're so early in this market space. This is not a divide and conquer space. It's really collaborate wherever you can, find the customer wherever you can, and just help grow the business, make it more mature, and also just drive adoption. The largest competition today is people visiting cities, not fully enjoying them, not fully discovering them, not fully consuming them. So therefore, people not booking experiences is maybe the largest competition. It's such a young category.
I
Interviewer25:36
Okay. Anything you want to expand on?
M
Matt Goldberg25:36
No, it's always fun to listen to Papine because I never know what he's going to say and I'm nodding vigorously and I agree. I think this is a low awareness category. More awareness is good for everybody. We love our position. We think having the focus of a marketplace entirely on experiences is valuable. We think the connectivity to TripAdvisor, which we are going to increasingly experiment with and we've already seen some opportunity there, is valuable. And we think when others come in, all boats rise. We will do incredibly well.
I
Interviewer26:11
Okay. I do need to ask about how you're thinking about AI agents. Of course, that's part of our whole theme, the new agents. How have you been thinking about and what are you thinking about a future world where we have agents doing the searching and the shopping and the booking?
M
Matt Goldberg26:24
Well, of course, we've been there early, right? We partnered to work on agentic AI with OpenAI and Operator. So, we want to learn, we want to be there, we want to understand where it's going and influence. You saw us experiment early with trip planning and itinerary building, sort of unleashing the power of our content and bringing it to surface in new and unique ways, and then increasingly with an AI travel assistant on our site which you can do on the web today. It's going into mobile now. I think you see these things coming together that we've been experimenting and integrating into what will feel like an agentic experience. We think we can deliver an agentic experience on our products and services and we are increasingly interested from a kind of fundamental innovation perspective around how we might position ourselves with our assets and with partners in the world of agentic AI where agents are actually doing the work and we think there's a role for us to play there. But I'll go back to what I said earlier. Anybody who thinks they have it figured out is nuts and we're trying to get there in a way where we're just experimenting and learning and then making bets and positioning ourselves.
P
Pepijn Rijvers27:31
I would also add that what's often overlooked, it's really easy of course to think about agentic AI as this magical thing that does everything. At the same time, if that were the case, the amount of infrastructure that sits behind and the costs associated with that infrastructure are massive and no way is that affordable at the moment. It's getting a lot of innovation. It's getting a lot of funding and investment and as a result probably they can postpone the monetization part for a long time. Obviously, there's a massive market of one of the really large search brands in the world. Everybody understands the value that sits in helping people discover what they need to discover. But you're already seeing this infrastructure of agentic nodes starts to emerge. You have the Model Context Protocol, which is essentially a language for agents to talk to each other, way more efficient than crawling someone's website end to end. And as a result, investing in offering up the right infrastructure and again I go back to the piping between all the various connectors is really a role that platforms will play and have to play. And there we're again, it's like early innings of this game. We'll be talking about all of this for quite some time I think.
I
Interviewer28:40
Well, before we wrap up, we want to do a few rapid-fire questions for both of you. So I'll start with: In five years, the top travel currency will be points, cash, or reputation?
M
Matt Goldberg28:53
Reputation. 100% reputation.
I
Interviewer28:58
This is good. You agree?
P
Pepijn Rijvers28:58
You picked the right guy.
I
Interviewer29:00
Maybe let's see. The future of influencer marketing: dead, evolving, or dominant?
M
Matt Goldberg29:10
Evolving.
P
Pepijn Rijvers29:10
Yeah, I would probably say the same. But otherwise leaning towards dominant, I think. I think personality and insights will have the ability to play a larger role. Today it's quite unscalable, right? It's really hard to discover every popular opinion that you might appreciate, but it might grow in the future.
I
Interviewer29:34
The most used app on your last leisure trip not owned by your company.
M
Matt Goldberg29:39
You're going to get in trouble, aren't you?
P
Pepijn Rijvers29:39
Yeah, exactly. An AI app.
M
Matt Goldberg29:46
Spotify.
I
Interviewer29:48
Okay. All right. That's a good one, actually. And finally, what is always in your carry-on?
M
Matt Goldberg29:57
Well, you know this, a physical book or two or three.
I
Interviewer30:00
Yes, we talked about that last time.
P
Pepijn Rijvers30:00
Chargers. I need loads of chargers.
I
Interviewer30:04
All right. Well, thank you so much, Matt Goldberg, Pepijn Rijvers. Thank you.