TripAdvisor(R), the largest travel community in the world, today announced Ken Surdan has joined its management team as senior vice president of technology, to lead the company's rapidly expanding engineering and IT teams. TripAdvisor has doubled its workforce in the past year, while also doubling the amount of content on the site, growing from 5 million to 10 million reviews and opinions.

"We're thrilled that Ken has embraced the challenge to help us deliver the best possible tools and user experience to our travelers," said Steve Kaufer, founder and CEO of TripAdvisor. "Ken has a history with startups where he's proven that he can deliver robust technology platforms on time and under budget, while growing traffic and performance exponentially."

Surdan comes to TripAdvisor from Smart Bargains, where he served as COO/CTO and led initiatives to radically increase reliability and scalability of core systems and improve customer satisfaction. Prior to Smart Bargains, Ken was CTO at National Leisure Group, where he led the technology strategy through a period of extremely high growth. Ken started his web career at Send.com as vice president of technology. Prior to the dot-com revolution, Ken held technology leadership positions at The Stride Rite Corporation, The Timberland Company and Digital Equipment Corporation. He holds an undergraduate degree from Boston University and an MBA from Babson College.

"TripAdvisor has established itself as an outstanding technology culture, with a hand-picked team of top software engineers who have built a remarkable product and business," said Ken Surdan, senior vice president of technology at TripAdvisor. "I'm very excited to join such an accomplished technology team. I believe TripAdvisor is at the forefront of the user-generated content revolution and is setting the standard for excellence in this space and I look forward to being a part of the team, writing the next chapter of this success story."

About TripAdvisor Media Network

TripAdvisor(R) Media Network, operated by TripAdvisor, LLC, attracts nearly 30 million monthly visitors (source: comScore Media Metrix, Digital Calculator Report, July 2007) across eight popular travel brands, TripAdvisor(R) sites, bookingbuddy.com (TM), cruisecritic.com(TM), independenttraveler.com(TM), seatguru.com(R), smartertravel.com(TM), travel-library.com(TM) and travelpod.com(TM). TripAdvisor-branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 25 million monthly visitors, five million registered members and 10 million reviews and opinions. Featuring real advice from real travelers, TripAdvisor-branded sites cover 270,000+ hotels and attractions and operate in the U.S. (http://www.tripadvisor.com/), the U.K. (http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/), France (http://www.tripadvisor.fr/) and Germany (http://www.tripadvisor.de/). TripAdvisor(R) Media Network provides travel suppliers with graphical advertising opportunities and a cost-per-click marketing platform. Collectively, the sites comprising the TripAdvisor Media Network have won hundreds of awards and accolades from press and industry, worldwide. TripAdvisor and the sites comprising the TripAdvisor Media Network are operating companies of Expedia, Inc. .

TripAdvisor, TripAdvisor.com, bookingbuddy.com, cruisecritic.com, independenttraveler.com, seatguru.com, smartertravel.com, travel-library.com and travelpod.com are either trademarks or registered trademarks of TripAdvisor, LLC, in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other logos or product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE: TripAdvisor