First Look at Trivago Express Booking Shows Sharp Contrast With TripAdvisor
Photo Credit: Trivago rolled out Express Bookings with the aim of streamlining bookings for online travel agencies, and an Internet booking engine for hotel partners. The image above shows Trivago's implementation of Express Bookings for Hotels.com. Trivago
Skift Take
Trivago is trying to develop a more partner-friendly booking flow than TripAdvisor has done with Instant Booking. But Trivago, which admittedly is still experimenting with its new features, still has ample consumer confusion to sort out.
With Expedia rival Booking.com agreeing to offer its hotel bookings on TripAdvisor, Expedia Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was quick to point out last week that Expedia-owned Trivago "is now pretty aggressively testing out a product that looks like [TripAdvisor] Instant Book."
Actually, it doesn't.
In a first look at the Trivago hotel-booking initiative, it is clear that the look and feel of TripAdvisor Instant Booking and what Trivago is calling Express Booking are vastly different, as are the philosophies behind them and the business models.
But there are gray areas, as well -- at least for now.
During Expedia's third quarter earnings call October 30, Khosrowshahi pointed to some of the differences between Trivago's and TripAdvisor's rollouts. "We think that there is a lot more clarity again on where the consumer is booking their travel," Khosrowshahi said. "Trivago is simply trying to optimize that path versus let's say gather consumer data to upsell them other stuff. So the
