Political Audit: Tripadvisor, Inc.

Audit Phase: Political Subject Entity: Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP; Delaware corporation; head office 400 1st Avenue, Needham, Massachusetts 02494, USA) Audit Date: June 2026 Evidence Base: Published corporate disclosures and press releases, SEC filings, UN OHCHR documentation, NGO and campaign-group materials (Amnesty International, Who Profits, AFSC, BDS/PACBI, USCPR), trade and national press, and federal lobbying records. This audit is a forensic evidence inventory only. No scoring, weighting, or interpretive conclusion is drawn here.

Corporate Communications & Public Stance

Official Position on the Israel-Palestine Conflict

No public evidence was identified of any named, dated corporate statement by Tripadvisor, Inc. addressing the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, the subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza, or the Israel-Palestine conflict as a geopolitical matter. Tripadvisor’s investor-relations newsroom and corporate communications, reviewed in June 2026, carry no statement on the conflict.¹

When Amnesty International publicly pressed Tripadvisor over its settlement listings in 2019, the company’s documented public response framed its platform as politically neutral: “We aim to provide travelers with an apolitical, accurate and useful picture of all accommodations, restaurants and attractions that are currently open for business around the world,” adding that “the listing of a property or business on TripAdvisor does not represent our endorsement of that establishment.”²³

Comparative Responsiveness

Tripadvisor has issued or taken documented public actions in response to other contemporaneous events. In June 2020, in the context of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, co-founder and then-CEO Steve Kaufer publicly stated the Tripadvisor Foundation had donated grants “to support organizations dedicated to racial equality within the Black community.”⁴ In March 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Tripadvisor temporarily suspended publishing new user reviews for certain listings in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus that were experiencing an influx of protest-driven submissions, displaying a notice that it had “temporarily suspended publishing new reviews for this listing.”⁵ The contrast between these documented responses and the absence of any identified named statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict is recorded here as a factual matter of the corporate communications record, not as an inference.

Market Framing of Israel / Occupied-Territory Listings

Tripadvisor’s documented public framing of its operations is one of apolitical, law-neutral global listing (see the 2019 statement above).²³ Amnesty International’s 2019 Destination: Occupation report found that Tripadvisor listed settlement properties under Israeli geographic framing; Who Profits separately documented that the platform presents settlement properties in occupied territory as located in “Israel” or in “an Israeli settlement,” which it characterised as obscuring their location in occupied territory.⁶⁷ No special geopolitical, partnership, or solidarity language toward the Israeli state was identified in reviewed Tripadvisor corporate disclosures beyond this commercial listing framing.¹

Operations in Occupied or Contested Territories

The economic and physical dimensions of Tripadvisor’s settlement-listing operations are inventoried in the Economic audit and are not reproduced here in full. The following records the political/governance-relevant documentation and Tripadvisor’s positional posture.

UN OHCHR settlement-enterprise database. Tripadvisor, Inc. is named in the United Nations database of business enterprises involved in activities relating to Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It was included as entry No. 82 in the original list of 112 enterprises published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in February 2020 (A/HRC/43/71), was retained through the 30 June 2023 review update, and remains listed in the most recent update (A/HRC/60/19, dated 26 September 2025).⁸⁹¹⁰ In the 2025 database, “TripAdvisor, Inc.” is recorded against listed activity (e): “the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements, including transport.”¹⁰

Amnesty International (2019). Amnesty’s January 2019 report Destination: Occupation named Tripadvisor - alongside Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia - and found it listed “more than 70 different attractions, tours, restaurants, cafés, hotels and rental apartments” across 27 settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.⁶¹¹ Amnesty subsequently ran a sustained 2019–2020 advocacy campaign - including direct appeals to Tripadvisor staff - calling on the company to delist settlement properties.¹²² Tripadvisor’s documented response was the apolitical-listing statement recorded above; no public evidence was identified of Tripadvisor delisting settlement properties in response.²³

Who Profits Research Center. Who Profits maintains a company profile for Tripadvisor, Inc. (information “valid until 13/04/2024”) documenting settlement-tourism facilitation. The profile names settlement hotel listings in the occupied West Bank (e.g. Ariel, Almog, Ma’ale Adumim, Kalia, Kfar Adumim, Kfar Etzion, Karnei Shomron), the occupied Syrian Golan (e.g. Merom Golan, Odem, Katzrin, Ein Zivan), and occupied East Jerusalem, and records that the Tripadvisor-owned subsidiary Viator, Inc. “provides information and a booking service for tours in occupied East Jerusalem.”⁷

AFSC Investigate. The American Friends Service Committee’s Investigate database maintains a company profile for Tripadvisor in the context of companies linked to the Israeli occupation, based on the listing/facilitation conduct documented above, and records its inclusion on the UN database.⁸¹³

Human Rights Watch (2018). Human Rights Watch’s November 2018 report Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land expressly limited its scope to direct rental-booking platforms (Airbnb and Booking.com) and “does not include review or referral web sites”; Tripadvisor is therefore not named as a subject company in that report.¹⁴

Distinct corporate policy stance. No public evidence was identified of a distinct Tripadvisor human-rights-due-diligence disclosure, settlement-specific listing policy document, or board-level position on the Occupied Palestinian Territory beyond the general apolitical-listing posture recorded above.¹² No public evidence was identified of any documented change to Tripadvisor’s settlement-listing posture following the 19 July 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion or the November 2024 ICC arrest warrants. No public evidence was identified of Tripadvisor political advocacy for or against settlement trade.

Internal Governance, Content & Retail Policies

Employee Relations and Speech

No public evidence identified. No legal actions, employment-tribunal decisions, or widely reported HR controversies were found involving Tripadvisor enforcement of employee speech, political symbols, or union activity specifically relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Source classes examined include major news outlets and labour-sector reporting.

Content / Editorial Policy

Tripadvisor’s published content-integrity standards address fake reviews, harmful content, and community guidelines; no public evidence was identified of a geopolitically specific moderation policy toward Israel-Palestine.¹ No independent academic study, regulatory inquiry, or investigative report specifically documenting algorithmic suppression or content-moderation bias by Tripadvisor relating to Palestinian listings, reviews, or content was identified. One documented, conflict-adjacent content action is recorded for completeness: in March 2022 Tripadvisor temporarily suspended new reviews on certain Russia/Ukraine/Belarus listings experiencing protest-driven review activity (see Corporate Communications above).⁵

Retail / Supply Chain

Tripadvisor is a platform and marketplace business; it does not manufacture, import, or physically label goods. No reports or regulatory actions regarding product labelling, goods sourcing, or settlement-product categorisation apply to its primary business model. No public evidence identified. Source classes examined include EU/UK consumer-labelling regimes and consumer-watchdog reporting.

Brand Heritage & State Partnerships

Founding Heritage

Tripadvisor was founded in 2000 by Steve (Stephen) Kaufer and co-founders as a consumer travel-review and discovery platform. Its founding mandate is documented as commercial and consumer-internet in nature, with no identified connection to defence, military, or state-security sectors.¹⁵¹⁶

Israeli-State and Government Partnerships

No public evidence was identified of Tripadvisor accepting Israeli state honours or formal recognition, hosting Israeli government officials in a non-commercial partnership capacity, sponsoring a “Brand Israel” / Israeli public-diplomacy campaign, or holding a formal institutional partnership with Israeli governmental or academic bodies.¹ Whether Tripadvisor or its Viator subsidiary holds a co-marketing or data-sharing agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Tourism - a commercial arrangement common among global online travel agencies - was not confirmed in reviewed sources. No public evidence identified.

Industry Bodies / Responsible-Travel Branding

Tripadvisor participates in standard tourism trade bodies and operates responsible-travel / sustainability programmes; no Israel-specific state-partnership dimension was identified in these.¹ No public evidence identified.

Lobbying, Advocacy, Financing & Logistics

Federal Lobbying

Tripadvisor maintains a registered US federal lobbying presence. Per OpenSecrets/Senate disclosure data, the company reported federal lobbying expenditures of $390,000 in 2023 and $250,000 in 2024.¹⁷ No lobbying disclosures specifically referencing Israel, Palestine, anti-BDS legislation, or Middle East trade policy were identified in Tripadvisor’s federal lobbying records.¹⁷ No public evidence was identified of Tripadvisor corporate membership of, or funding for, pro-Israel lobbying organisations.

Political Donations / PAC

No public evidence was identified of Tripadvisor corporate or PAC contributions directed to candidates, committees, or causes specifically associated with Israel policy, anti-BDS legislation, or settlement-related trade positions.¹⁷ No public evidence was identified of corporate donations or sponsorships from Tripadvisor directed toward Israeli parastatal organisations, settlement groups, the Jewish National Fund / KKL, or Israeli military-welfare funds such as Friends of the IDF. Source classes examined include OpenSecrets data and corporate disclosures.¹⁷

Crisis Asset Mobilisation

No public evidence identified. No reporting was found of Tripadvisor directing corporate logistics, infrastructure, free platform credits, or physical assets to Israeli state, military, or state-aligned efforts during or after October 2023.

Boycott / Campaign Status

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) “Do No Harm!” ethical-tourism call (published March 2019, updated April 2019) named Tripadvisor among online tourism companies - alongside Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia - that should be pressured “to stop operating in or otherwise promoting visits to illegal Israeli settlements.”¹⁸ Tripadvisor is not named, however, in the BDS National Committee’s “Guide to BDS Boycott & Pressure Corporate Priority Targeting” (published 6 December 2024), whose consumer-boycott and pressure-target lists name companies including Chevron, Intel, HP, Microsoft, Carrefour, AXA, and - among travel/tech “pressure” targets - Google, Amazon, Booking, Airbnb and Expedia, but not Tripadvisor or Viator.¹⁹ Tripadvisor is likewise not named in the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) 2025 BDS boycott resource, whose travel/tech pressure-target list names Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, Airbnb and Booking.com, but not Tripadvisor or Viator.²⁰

Corporate Structure & Primary Mission

Tripadvisor, Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated, NASDAQ-listed (TRIP) commercial corporation, founded in 2000, whose stated mission is consumer travel discovery, reviews, and bookings.¹⁵¹⁶ No state-held golden share, sovereign-wealth-fund stake, charter provision, or founding mandate tying its corporate mission to the Israeli state or to any state’s foreign-policy objectives was identified.

A significant interest in Tripadvisor was historically held through Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings, Inc., a holding entity within the Liberty Media corporate network chaired by Gregory B. Maffei. On 19 December 2024, Tripadvisor and Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings announced a merger agreement under which Tripadvisor would acquire Liberty TripAdvisor (Series A/B common stock converting to cash at $0.2567 per share), dissolving Liberty TripAdvisor as a separate public holding company; the transaction was expected to close in the second quarter of 2025.²¹²² No public evidence was identified of any Israel-Palestine geopolitical dimension to the Liberty Media / Maffei corporate network in any reviewed SEC filing or financial disclosure.²¹²²

Executive & Leadership Footprint

Current and Former Executives - Donations and Affiliations

Matt Goldberg (Chief Executive Officer). Goldberg was appointed CEO of Tripadvisor on 4 May 2022 (effective 1 July 2022), succeeding co-founder Steve Kaufer. His documented prior career spans News Corp, Dow Jones, Liberty Interactive Corp / QVC Group, Lonely Planet (CEO), and The Trade Desk.²³²⁴ No public evidence was identified of any personal donation by Goldberg to FIDF, the Jewish National Fund, Israeli settlement bodies, or Israeli military-welfare organisations, and no public evidence of any personal board or leadership role in pro-Israel advocacy bodies or Israeli state-aligned institutions. No public statements, op-eds, signed letters, or social-media activity by Goldberg on the Israel-Palestine conflict were identified.

Steve (Stephen) Kaufer (Co-Founder; CEO 2000–2022). Kaufer’s publicly documented philanthropy is centred on cancer research: with his late first wife Caroline Lipson Kaufer he gave a documented $1.05 million to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and $250,000 to Massachusetts General Hospital for neuroendocrine-cancer research, and he serves on the board of the Neuroendocrine Tumor Research Foundation.²⁵²⁶ No public evidence was identified of donations by Kaufer to FIDF, the Jewish National Fund, Israeli settlement bodies, or pro-Israel advocacy organisations, and no public statements by him on the Israel-Palestine conflict were identified.²⁵²⁶

Gregory B. Maffei (Chairman, via Liberty TripAdvisor). Maffei is documented as Chairman, President and CEO of Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings.²¹ No public evidence was identified of any personal donation by Maffei to Israeli military-welfare, settlement, or parastatal organisations, of any board or leadership role in pro-Israel advocacy bodies, or of any public statement by him on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

No public evidence was identified of any other current named Tripadvisor board member or executive making such statements or holding such affiliations. The absence of evidence in this sub-category is recorded as searched-and-not-found and should not be read as conclusive confirmation of absence; claims about named individuals are reported only where sourced.

End Notes