Skift Forum Europe: Trivago's Bosses Try Unconventional Tactics to Manage Growth
Skift Take
How do you stay efficient and maintain core values when your company scales from 700 to 1,100 employees within a year? You get rid of most job titles and fly everyone to Ibiza for the weekend, says Trivago's managing director Johannes Thomas.
On April 4 in London, hundreds of the travel industry’s brightest and best will gather in London for the first Skift Forum Europe 2017. In only a few short years Skift's Forums — the largest creative business gatherings in the global travel industry — have become what media, speakers, and attendees have called the “TED Talks of travel.”
This year’s event at Tobacco Dock in London will feature speakers including CEOs and top executives from InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Norwegian Air, Google, Lonely Planet, Momondo Group, and many more.
The following is part of a series of posts highlighting some of the speakers and touching on issues of concern in Europe and beyond.
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Managing director of Trivago Johannes Thomas has thought a lot about startup culture and managing growth. When we last interviewed Thomas in September 2015, Trivago had 700 employees.
Since then, the company has gone on a hiring spree. Its headcount is now above 1,100.
Managing growth at that pace is a challenge, though having fresh capital after the company's December 2016 initial public offering helps. (The company remains part-owned by Expedia.)
Thomas joined the Düsseldorf-based Trivago in 2011 as global head of search engine marketing and has served as a managing director since June 2015. Previously, he had worked as a marketing executive at isango (since acquired by TUI), a website for booking travel experiences, and he had co-founded a company that operated travel sites in Germany, Italy, and Spain.
We recently caught up with Thomas by phone to suss out how his company manages to maintain efficiency as it scales up fast. We also asked about Trivago's strategy and its view on startup success as it invests in companies like Base7Booking, a hotel property management software business. Answers have been edited for brevity.
Trivago managing director Johannes Thomas will be speaking about Trivago's future at the Skift Forum Europe 2017 on April 4 in London.
Skift: What's this about you building a new corporate campus next to the harbor and the city center, bringing together teams currently scattered across three buildings?
Thomas: Getting top talent into the company, and work environment is today a critical decision-making fact
