Management has no idea what to do - Anonymous employee Travelzoo Employee Review

1.0
Jan 4, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1) The travel stipend can be nice (though I personally struggled to use the stipend on travel that excited me). 2) I learned a lot from my teammates. Travelzoo has a high bar for hiring, so many of the people I worked with were quite smart. 3) I genuinely enjoyed the company of my officemates.

Cons

1) The company is extremely top-down. You will not solve real-world problems for your customers or clients. You will solve problems the CEO and his direct reports *imagine* are problems. 2) The company claims it fosters an "entrepreneurial" mindset, but there's nothing farther from the truth. You will not have autonomy. You will be told what to do. And after you do what you were told, you will probably be criticized for doing it wrong. 3) The tools the company provides are outdated or missing altogether. This ranges from the hardware -- they stopped providing company phones recently; the external monitors are comically small -- to the software -- the internal tooling is all a decade or more old, and sits in silos. You have to work very hard to learn fresh skills at Travelzoo, and even then, you will have to do it under cover of night. 4) There is zero transparency. Each team sits in a silo. Each office sits in a silo. You only learn people have left the company when you get a "this email is no longer valid" bounce. The management team tries hard, but because everything is controlled by the CEO and his brother, there's no direction, and no context for any changes to the company's roadmap. There are no goals, so no one knows what they're working to achieve. Truly, you're just working to avoid getting yelled at. I can honestly say that this is the worst job I've ever had.

Explore other reviews about Travelzoo

5.0
Feb 12, 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Travel perks, office location. Collaboration.

Cons

Some managers had too much “power”

2.0
Nov 4, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-The Top 20 is well done and the deals are real. —Their priority is a good user experience. -We had talented and bright people who went on to find good jobs with other major companies. -Their owners are German brothers with exquisite taste. Internal company events are top notch, bougie and well done.

Cons

-They started hiring sales reps at half the base pay of what older reps made. While the compensation was fair when I was there, I would not work there now as the base is low. -Overall revenue growth has been stagnant for many years. -They do not innovate and their main product email blasts are old marketing tech. They do one thing (The Top 20) very well and that is it. If you are a person who needs to grow and learn new things and innovate in your career, this is not the place for you. When times got tough, they cut products instead of expanding giving more limited sales opportunities. -Their 401k match was very little only a flat $1,500/year. -Small company so limited growth opportunities. -Like many companies, while they hired all ethnicities, senior management were all white so while they touted diversity and women in leadership, I did not consider them a true diverse company as this was a blind spot for them as it is with many companies in America.

3
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