How Does Trivago Make Money? | Trivago Business Model, Growth And Statistics

trivago

Krishna kumar

Oct 7, 2020 — 9 min read

Trivago is a hotel search platform, whose main focus is to reopen the way travelers compare and search for hotels online. During this process, Trivago Hotels enables advertisers to expand their business, giving them access to a large consumer base who visit their platforms via a website or app.

Trivago was conceptualized in the city of Düsseldorf, Germany in the year 2005. The hotel aggregator was started by three university friends, Rolf Schrogmens, Peter Vinnmeier, and Stephan Stubner. Similar to the majority of start-ups, the initial foundation of the business was laid from a garage.

Besides, one of the 2006 founders, Stephen, decided to pursue a career in education, so Malte Sievert became part of the founding team. Trivago's top management includes CEO Rolf Schrogmens, CFO Axel Heffer and COO Johannes Thomas.

How Trivago Got Started?
Growth Of Trivago
Services Provided By Trivago
Trivago Business Model
Trivago App
Trivago Referral Revenue
Trivago Geography Split
Trivago Statistics
Swot Analysis
Partnership Perks Of Trivago
Ever Growing Success Of Trivago

How Trivago Got Started?

Trivago started its operations in Germany and soon after the company started, it gained momentum and grew in various markets. At its launch, Trivago partnered with OTA (online travel agency) to meet its demands, following its objective of successfully showing information to consumers.

The hotel aggregator collected data from large hotels to littler organizations and showed it properly to hotel seekers. The company focuses on accumulating information from reliable sources so that customers can always be provided with reliable and most satisfactory services.

Also, features such as filters and sorting functions allow every traveler to find the most ideal hotel room at the location of their choice. Trivago is equipped with a highly robust and robust server infrastructure, giving the company the necessary data center that will meet Trivago's high-security standards, reliability as well as flexibility. All these features give its visitors and search engines the ability to search for direct and fast results for hotel rooms.

Growth Of Trivago

Over the years, Trivago has developed extensively. Starting its operations from a garage, the hotel aggregator now employs about 5000 employees in its various offices worldwide.

Trivago came with its first advertising campaign in the year 2008–09 when most travel organizations were not doing brand promotion. Trivago ran an effective TV advertising campaign in his native Germany.

The proceeds from the brand promotion campaign were used by Trivago to expand its operations in Europe which is one of its most popular and successful markets to date.

The hotel aggregator started its operations from Germany and to date, it has achieved tremendous growth with presence in over 190 countries of the world. It attracts over 120 million visitors to its platform every month and is now rated as the largest hotel search website in the world. Currently, Trivago analyzes 900,000 hotels in 33 different languages from over 250 placements across the month.

Over the years, Trivego's customers have given more than 150 million hotel reviews with over 17 million photos. At the end of last year, the hotel aggregator provided more than 14.6 million bookings for the budget as well as luxury hotels. Besides, Trivago is one of the most successful and fastest-growing start-ups, not just in Germany but worldwide, whose profits have been growing manifold since 2008.

Services Provided By Trivago

Using Trivago's Hotel Manager, hoteliers can list their hotel through a profile on the Trivago website. Registration is free through the simple online form. Trivago Hotel Manager Basic is completely free to use, allowing you to list your hotel and benefit from the increased risk.

For an even more advanced triangle profile, you can join the Hotel Manager PRO. This takes you one step above the original version by highlighting your contact details to enable hotel news prominently on your profile and encouraging viewers to contact you directly through your website or phone number.

It also provides you with advanced analytical tools such as viewing visitors' profiles and competitor data so that you can target your audience more effectively.

Once you are registered with the Trivago Hotel Manager, you can assign your hotel to your hotel profile. You can add it if the hotel is not already on Tivago's list, although it takes up to seven days to get approval. You can manage multiple hotels in your account with an easy-to-use dashboard.

Once you have added your hotel, add detailed information, including contact details and eye-catching images, so that your hotel is attractive to visitors and arrives in relevant search results.

Trivago provides professionally written hotel descriptions for every hotel. These feature high-quality keywords to attract web traffic. Hotel reviews from other booking sites are automatically collided by Trivago search robots, contributing to the overall rating score for each hotel. Trivago also offers a rate connect service. This allows you to set up competitive cost-per-click advertising campaigns, track your performance, track through analytics, and control your marketing budget for the best success at the lowest cost. The service pays a set fee through an initial consultation.

Trivago Business Model

Customer Segments

Trivago has a multidisciplinary business model. It mainly consists of two separate customer segments that are required for operations. It is to register brands that make their services available online to consumers who compare services as well as their prices to facilitate the purchase decision.

Value Proposition

There are mainly four primary value propositions that Trivago offers, namely access, customization, convenience, and brand/positioning.

The online hotel aggregator initially reduces accessibility by only enabling its customers to contribute to the content of their website. Also, they are motivated to add lodging brands and text descriptions. Complete the missing profile, as well as edit the profile to ensure the quality of the content.

The website promotes customization only by allowing brands on its platform to personalize their user profiles. The facility is offered by allowing visitors to find hotel rooms and compare prices according to brands.

Trivago App

Trivago offers a free app for its hotel search product on both mirrors and Android. In addition to the hotel search feature, the app provides proximity and interactive maps to the user's current location.

The Trivago app is listed in Mashable's 25 apps to save you money, USA today's 10 best apps for booking your stay, the independent app in Ireland to save you time and money, and Australia's News.com.au as one of the top apps to take on vacation.

Trivago Referral Revenue

Methods of earning income, a commission from hotels listed on Trivago sites, called revenue, when the user clicks, include Trivago subscription fees paid by hotels for services provided by Trivago's business model. Trivago outbound Fee is a global hotel search platform.

According to Trivago, its mission should be "the traveler’s first and independent source of information to find the ideal hotel at the lowest rate." Users can access Trivago in 55 local websites and applications and 33 countries.

Trivago combines hotel content from various sources on its platform. These hotels are then displayed to users based on their search criteria. Trivago also claims to help users achieve the best rates by providing comparisons to over a million hotels on over 250 booking sites.

However, users cannot book on Trivago, they can only select the hotel. For booking, they are redirecting to traditional OTAs (online travel agencies) such as Trains (PCLN), CTRP.com, and Expedia, from search results in a particular hotel.

Trivago Geography Split

Trivago has classified its revenue into three geographical regions, America, Europe and the rest of the world. For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the US constituted 38.2% of Trivago's revenue, Europe constituted 47.2%, and the rest of the world constituted 13.6%.

Trivago Statistics

120+ million month site visitors
Compares rates in over 1 million hotels
Over 190 million hotel ratings
There are more than 250 booking sites worldwide
Websites in more than 50 countries
More than 14 million photos

Swot Analysis

Strengths Of Trivago

It compares hotel prices to 700,000+ hotels. Nearly 5 million monthly visitors reach the site, which reaches the hotel platform. Strong support by Expedia, a leading name in the travel industry, has 50 international forums.

Weakness Of Trivago

Limited product offering. It only covers hotels and thus, does not cater to all aspects of travel. General competition means limited market share and low brand loyalty.

Opportunities For Trivago

Acquisition of online travel booking portal to expand its portfolio. Increased interest in travel tie-ups with more hotels may increase their presence.

Threats For Trivago

Expanding its portfolio to add flight, car, and bus booking facilities, Flight-Plus Hotel's combo packages presented by various portals are a major threat. The popularity of online travel portals erases a significant market share in India.

Partnership Perks Of Trivago

Listing to your hotel on Trivago's website allows you to see more than 120 million monthly visitors. It also shows overall reviews for your hotel from several booking sites. Depending on your hotel specialty on Trivago, you will reach a global audience of relevant travelers looking for a place to stay during your next travel adventure.

Ever Growing Success Of Trivago

Initially, Trivago received one million euros from angel investors - Christian Vollmann and Florian Hahnemann.
In the year of 2008, Trivago decided to take the help of TV commercials to develop its business. This move was because the top management believed that solely based on Google and other search engines to promote the business could prove unsafe in the long run.
Over the last 11 years, Trivago has been tasting success and expanding. The organization, which had funding of just $ 1.4 million in 2008, was able to achieve revenue of 1.035 billion by the end of 2017.
The hotel aggregator entered the US market in 2012 and entered into a joint venture with Expedia, an American travel organization. Expedia acquired a 61.6% stake in Trivago for the $632 million in the year of 2013 and thus claimed the majority of the organization's stock.
In the same year, Trivago entered the Asian market and India became the first country to operate in Asia.
In December 2016, Trivago achieved another feat as it was successfully listed on the symbol of the NASDAQ TRVG ticker. By that time, Trivago had hired over 1000 employees in its various offices worldwide. Traffic on the Trivago continues to increase with each passing year. And, compared to the previous year, Trivago's traffic expanded by 25% in the year 2018.
Trivago has been acquiring large and small businesses for the past few years and its most recent acquisition was TripHappy for an undisclosed sum in May 2018.

Frequently Asked Questions About Trivago

Does trivago mean anything?

Trivago stands for Trip Vacation and Go.

How does Trivago get its data?

Before running a campaign, advertisers need to provide an import feed containing all hotels they want to be advertised on trivago. trivago will import the advertiser's hotel inventory into the trivago database and based on the provided data, the hotels will be mapped to the corresponding trivago properties.

Who is trivago owned by?

Trivago is owned by Expedia Group.

How much does it cost to advertise on trivago?

Registering on Trivago for advertising is for free and claiming business area is also free. Using Trivago business studio you can monitor your business profile as well as optimize your hotel profile for free.

Does Trivago have flights?

Trivago does offer search services to travelers for One-Way flights, Round-trip, and Multi-City flights.

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