Tripadvisor seamlessly transitions to Google Workspace with SADA Services

Prioritizing experiences over goods

In recent years, a profound paradigm shift has occurred in consumer behavior with a growing trend toward prioritizing experiences over goods. This new mindset, driven by a desire for personal growth, memorable moments, and a sense of fulfillment, has rippled across industries, but none more than the travel sector.

As a leading travel platform, connecting millions of travelers with countless destinations, accommodations, and activities, Tripadvisor stands at the forefront of this transformation. Recognizing this dynamic landscape, Tripadvisor is aware of the need to continuously innovate and adapt. Their commitment lies in seeking novel and impactful ways to enhance the user experience and optimize operations. This ensures they remain a relevant resource for travelers while maintaining agility and efficiency.

Business challenge

For years, Tripadvisor operated with a hybrid IT environment. Their history of acquiring best-of-breed solutions created a fragmented infrastructure. While Google Drive gained early adoption through engineering initiatives and later became widely used, they still relied on Microsoft productivity tools, SharePoint, OneDrive, and aging on-premises servers. This resulted in data silos, increased management complexity, and duplicated costs.

“Collectively, we’ve been a company where we’ve gone off and cherry-picked products over the years,” says Ben Keed, Head of IT at Tripadvisor. “We went from on-prem Exchange to Microsoft 365, then realized we have all this data in shared drives and on-prem. We needed to get better at putting it all in one spot.”

Tripadvisor’s vision aimed to create a uniform environment and reduce operational overhead from managing multiple systems. They needed one solution to store and share their data and enable their workers to productively collaborate. This meant selecting one platform. 

Deciding between different digital platforms

With two brands of digital infrastructure in place in the form of Microsoft and Google Cloud, Tripadvisor intended to pick one of them to consolidate all of their workplace data. That partially came down to how workers already collaborated. “Most of our shareable data was already in Google Drive,” says Keed. “Google makes it super easy to share data. Without question, it’s the easiest platform for sharing.”

Tripadvisor also wanted to ensure a consistent user experience for workers regardless of what type of computing device they use.

“Microsoft 365 has applications on a desktop,” says Keed. “Do we want to keep working that way? Or do we want to have one cohesive experience? The Mac version of Outlook has always been a bit different from the Windows version. Instead, we thought we should run everything in the browser and have the exact same user experience and support for everyone.”

Existing infrastructure impeded collaboration

Additionally, Tripadvisor’s outdated on-prem servers posed risks. Hardware failures were becoming more frequent, making the need for migration inevitable. The existing infrastructure impeded collaboration, created information silos, and made searching for data cumbersome. Fragmented infrastructure hurt productivity and increased soft costs with inefficient workflows.

“Our on-prem server infrastructure for these services was aging, and it made logical sense to move those workflows and data,” says Keed.

Factoring in platform cost-effectiveness

Another factor was platform cost-effectiveness. Keed thought it boiled down to locking in cost predictability over a fixed period. 

Then the imperative to decrease costs became a catalyst for change, as a looming deadline appeared on the calendar. Approaching a critical renewal with Microsoft, Tripadvisor faced the possibility of another multi-year contract with significant licensing commitments. 

“We had to migrate by the renewal deadline, or we’d be on the hook for all these Microsoft licenses,” says Andrew Rogers, Associate Director of IT Engineering at Tripadvisor. “If we didn’t reduce our license count for the productivity suite, it meant a whole new Enterprise Agreement.”

Solution

Ultimately, Tripadvisor decided to migrate to Google Workspace, citing its user experience and comparable price point. SADA, An Insight company, was able to architect a competitive Google Workspace cost structure for Tripadvisor over an extended time. 

“Now we were getting serious, and we were able to lock in Google Workspace for five years,” recalls Keed. “That’s what sealed the deal.”

Collaborating on the move to Google Workspace

With the solution merits and value proposition of Google Workspace settled, completing the migration before the Microsoft renewal deadline took precedence. 

Tripadvisor’s migration to Google Workspace was made possible through a strategic collaboration with SADA. Providing more than just migration services, SADA offered expert guidance, strategic planning, and unwavering support throughout the entire process. Drawing on their experience as the 2025 Google Workspace Partner of the Year, SADA saw that the mail migration, SharePoint transition, and on-prem server move should be handled separately. The different phases of the project were planned in order of complexity. 

“We front-loaded mail because that was going to be the hardest piece,” says Rogers. “Then we focused on SharePoint because it also had a licensing requirement. The on-prem servers didn’t have that same license dependency. SADA was good at helping identify these three big portions, including the two with time-sensitivity, and helped us prioritize.”

For the first phase, SADA focused on mail migration. This included not only migrating mailboxes but also integrating distribution lists, security groups, licensing, and automation. “Calling it a mail migration does it a small disservice,” says Chris Benham, Associate Director Global Services at Tripadvisor. “That’s because SADA and our team had to complete all the different integrations.” 

Managing legacy data and integrating with existing systems

To complete the mail migration, the SADA team faced numerous challenges, including managing legacy data, diverse user workflows, and integrating with existing systems. The complexity of recipient address mapping from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace required meticulous planning and execution because the trickiest part of the migration was making sure that mapping was done correctly, unwound, and documented.

“Talking about recipient address mapping, we had a real mess of email redirects that leveraged contacts, distribution lists, and shared mailboxes,” says Rogers. “SADA gave us the tools to figure out the end-to-end mapping and provided the solution for the recipient address mapping.”

Throughout the process, SADA provided data sheets for tracking users, shared mailboxes, and distribution lists. They helped map on-prem directories to Google Drive and provided the resources and knowledge needed to make critical decisions. Tripadvisor also noted the invaluable contributions of SADA Deployment Engineers, who provided expert guidance and support every step of the migration.

Navigating resistance with organizational change management

Migrating to a new productivity suite inevitably faced resistance from users accustomed to the Microsoft environment. “Senior people in the company were less open to change,” says Keed. “They were so ingrained in using Microsoft.”

The process of changing from Microsoft to Google Workspace and using new tools to accomplish the same tasks was acknowledged with training and workarounds, where needed, for functions like legal and finance. “We had to emphasize the importance of education and reassurance,” says Eric Thomas, Senior Information Technology Manager at Tripadvisor. “That addressed the unknown and demonstrated users could still perform their jobs effectively.”

To navigate resistance, SADA played a pivotal role in organizational change management. They facilitated discovery sessions, workshops, and training, tailored to Tripadvisor’s unique environment. SADA provided strategic guidance on communication and engagement, ensuring that users were informed and supported throughout the transition. 

“SADA’s Change Management team created a resource site so everything about Workspace lives in one place and set up chat channels and Google guides to cater to us and how we work,” says Thomas. “That’s important because no two companies are alike. SADA came into our environment and saw that how our users work is different from other companies. They were thoughtful about that.”

Enhancing productivity and collaboration with Gemini

As the migration concluded, Tripadvisor began exploring Gemini, Google Workspace’s GenAI assistant. The enablement of Gemini was described as a “seamless process” by Thomas, with SADA facilitating the setup and training.

Gemini unlocked new capabilities for Tripadvisor. NotebookLM eased consolidation and access to data repositories particularly valued by Tripadvisor’s Viator team. Gemini’s ability to summarize emails, analyze Google Sheets data, and help drafting documents proved to be game-changers. The adoption of Gemini also shifted the company’s focus toward GenAI, driving further innovation and productivity gains.

Changing video conference applications from Teams to Meet

Along with the general migration to Google Workspace, Tripadvisor also had many video assets they needed to move from Microsoft Teams to Google Meet. Based on the volume, SADA divided the task into smaller activities to make it more feasible. To instruct Tripadvisor employees on the differences in using Meet, SADA conducted separate sessions, with their Change Management consultants taking charge.

“Working with SADA, we were able to break down the migration to Meet into manageable chunks and very defined projects, which allowed us to distribute those workloads throughout the team,” says Benham. “In particular, the change in conferencing tools from Microsoft to Google requires a lot of training, and SADA’s expertise in that regard is second to none.”

Already, Tripadvisor users have noticed the difference between Meet and Teams video calls. “Our experience with Google Meet is far superior for video and audio quality and general usability,” says Rogers. “We had many user reports about the quality of Teams calls from their laptops, but we’ve gotten zero about Google Meet.”

Impact

As a result of working with SADA on their migration to Google Workspace, Tripadvisor realized significant outcomes, including an 82% reduction in Microsoft productivity licenses, which translated into substantial cost savings. Consolidation of data and workflows improved collaboration and eliminated information silos, and users reported increased productivity and ease of use, particularly with Google Drive’s sharing capabilities and Gemini’s AI-powered features. The Tripadvisor project was a large undertaking over 120 days, involving the successful migration of:

• 92.4 terabytes of data
• 315 million digital items
• 4,500 users
• 459 shared drives

Achieving key benefits

SADA’s project work also provided key benefits. Streamlining the licensing process and simplifying IT management enables Tripadvisor to focus on strategic initiatives. Additionally, Tripadvisor adopted SADA’s change management methodology for internal projects, further improving their operational efficiency.

Overall, Tripadvisor’s migration to Google Workspace was a resounding success, driven by strategic vision, effective planning, and a strong collaboration with SADA. The project achieved its primary objectives of cost reduction and consolidation, while also delivering benefits in productivity, collaboration, and security.

Awarding a ‘perfect 10’

The Tripadvisor team rated their satisfaction with SADA highly, with Benham awarding a “perfect 10,” highlighting their invaluable expertise, genuine collaboration, and dedication to ensuring the project’s success. “SADA’s attention to detail, their ability to listen and adapt to Tripadvisor’s specific needs, and their unwavering support throughout the entire process enabled us to easily accomplish our goals,” says Keed. 

Strategic technology adoption, coupled with the right collaborators, can transform an enterprise and prepare it for future opportunities. Tripadvisor not only optimized their operations but also empowered their workforce with the tools and capabilities they need to thrive.