Trivago to Focus on Resolving User 'Irritation' With Metasearch


A finger touching a screen with the Trivago logo on the screen.

Skift Take

Would Priceline or other big travel advertisers want a co-branded booking experience with Trivago to increase bookings? Maybe, but these advertisers would likely spar with Trivago on the details of the co-branding.

One reason German hotel price-comparison site Trivago invested $10 million in Holisto is to resolve the "irritation" Trivago users feel when they get bounced around to many other sites to make a booking.

"The product gap is basically that we see user irritation with leaving our site and landing on dozens of different sites," Trivago CEO Johannes Thomas told analysts Wednesday during the company's second quarter earnings call.

That's a flaw that Trivago is trying to address in the metasearch model.

When Trivago offers a hotel deal and users navigate to third-party advertiser sites to book, they encounter landing pages of varying quality, he said, adding that's an especially acute problem on a mobile phone.

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