TripAdvisor Appoints Kanika Soni as President of the Company's Hotels Business Unit

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Mar 11, 2019, 08:00 ET

NEEDHAM, Mass., March 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- TripAdvisor®, the world's largest travel site*, today announced that Kanika Soni will join the company as president of the hotels business unit, effective April 15. In this role, Soni will oversee TripAdvisor's hotels business, representing a substantial part of the company's total revenue. She will be responsible for product, engineering, sales and marketing for hotels.

Soni will report to Stephen Kaufer, TripAdvisor president and CEO, and will focus on building a future-focused strategy to ensure TripAdvisor's continued growth and profitability in a rapidly shifting, increasingly complex and competitive global landscape.

"I'm very excited to have Kanika join TripAdvisor and welcome her to the TripAdvisor management team," said Kaufer. "Kanika is a dynamic leader whose remarkable success scaling digital and e-commerce businesses, while keeping customer experience at the core of business strategy, will be a tremendous asset to TripAdvisor. She brings a unique perspective, having operated both within large-scale Fortune 500 companies, as well as with fast-paced innovative startups -- across multiple industries and serving a wide array of luxury and mass-market customers."

Most recently, Soni served as senior vice president, global e-commerce of the Consumer Products Division at the Walt Disney Company. In 2016, Soni took over Disney's e-commerce unit and proceeded to quickly turn the business around to deliver sustained double-digit growth in revenue and gross profit. This transformation centered around several strategic initiatives and yielded significant gains in traffic and conversion.

Prior to Disney, Soni led the Online and Global Digital Marketing teams at Tesla Motors where she helped launch the Model 3 to deliver the biggest week of any product launch ever ($14B in implied future sales on 300K+ reservations¹). Soni has also had successful leadership roles at both Gilt Groupe and McKinsey & Company.

"TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel site helping nearly half a billion people a month plan and book their trips," said Soni. "It's an exciting time to join TripAdvisor, and help develop the next generation of personalized experiences and innovative solutions that will better serve our customers and partners globally."

About TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel site*, enables travelers to unleash the full potential of every trip. With over 730 million reviews and opinions covering the world's largest selection of travel listings worldwide – covering approximately 8.1 million accommodations, airlines, experiences, and restaurants – TripAdvisor provides travelers with the wisdom of the crowds to help them decide where to stay, how to fly, what to do and where to eat. TripAdvisor also compares prices from more than 200 hotel booking sites so travelers can find the lowest price on the hotel that's right for them. TripAdvisor-branded sites are available in 49 markets, and are home to the world's largest travel community of 490 million average monthly unique visitors**, all looking to get the most out of every trip. TripAdvisor: Know better. Book better. Go better.

The subsidiaries and affiliates of TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) own and operate a portfolio of websites and businesses, including the following travel media brands:

www.airfarewatchdog.com, www.bokun.io, www.bookingbuddy.com, www.cruisecritic.com, www.familyvacationcritic.com, www.flipkey.com, www.thefork.com (including www.lafourchette.com, www.eltenedor.com and www.restorando.com), www.holidaylettings.co.uk, www.holidaywatchdog.com, www.housetrip.com, www.jetsetter.com, www.niumba.com, www.onetime.com, www.oyster.com, www.seatguru.com, www.smartertravel.com, www.tingo.com, www.vacationhomerentals.com and www.viator.com.

*Source: Jumpshot for TripAdvisor Sites, worldwide, December 2018
**Source: TripAdvisor internal log files, average monthly unique visitors during seasonal peak in Q3 2018

¹ Source: https://www.tesla.com/blog/the-week-electric-vehicles-went-mainstream

²Source: "Sizing the Worldwide Travel Economy" study, conducted by Oxford Economics in 2018 found TripAdvisor had an enormous estimated influence of $546 billion in 2017 alone.

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SOURCE TripAdvisor