NEEDHAM, Mass.--January 22, 2001-- TripAdvisor, Inc. (www.TripAdvisor.com), the award-winning search engine that delivers the world's opinion on travel, today announced the appointment of Michael J. Durham, former President and CEO of Sabre to its Board of Advisors. "With over 20 years in the travel industry, Mike's experience will be of great benefit to TripAdvisor," commented Langley Steinert, Chairman of TripAdvisor. "As an OEM Provider of directory and search services, we will turn to Mike for his knowledge of the travel industry as we implement our strategy for meeting the needs of travel agents and travel service providers."
According to Durham, "the established GDS companies like Sabre have set industry standards for closed network travel data. TripAdvisor is setting similar standards for web-based travel content, providing a new structured network of relevant travel information. This service will be a competitive asset for travel service providers as they develop and refine their online strategies."
During his tenure at Sabre, Durham oversaw the company's successful initial public offering in 1996 through which the company became an 80 percent owned affiliate of AMR Corporation. Prior to Sabre, Mr. Durham spent 16 years with AMR/American Airlines, where he was senior vice president and treasurer of AMR and senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer of American Airlines. Durham became President and CEO of Sabre in 1995. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Cornell University Johnson School of Management, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Rochester.
TripAdvisor provides consumers and travel professionals with a powerful research tool that mines the wealth of the Web for relevant, personalized travel information. TripAdvisor's patent-pending technologies search, filter, sort and rank information, to return the most complete and relevant information on a travel destination. TripAdvisor includes links to information from three types of sources: authoritative content from online newspapers, travel magazines, and guide books; 'net comments culled from message boards, personal home pages, travelogues, and rating sites; and TripAdvisor user-contributed reviews. Information is organized by source and ranked by relevancy, based on users' personal profiles and the ratings of other users.
