The travel agents are in huge demand with development in the tourism industry. India’s travel and tourism attract millions of foreign travelers every year. Witnessing immense profit in the acreage of tourism, a lot of online travel companies has been launched within the past decade. The companies like Trivago provide an entire customized travel package for you.
But, Trivago is a company that exclusively makes hotel search better. Trivago founded in January 2005 is a hotel search engine provides services to more than fifty countries. Users can search hotels according to their convenience and book through Trivago’s online platform.
Trivago founders are Rolf Schroemgens, Stephan Stubner, Peter Vinnemeier, and Malte Siewert. Schroemgens is the CEO of the company. The company currently has around 1300 employees.
About the Founders
Rolf Schroemgens went to the HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management. He graduated in the year 2000 and started working in Ciao.com. He worked as the VP of Product & Strategy. He left the company in 2001 and after a break of three years, he made a breakthrough. Schroemgens became the President of the Entrepreneur’s Organization in 2015.
Stubner completed his high school education from Munich and went to the University of Paderborn for studying business. After graduating he started launching many online start-ups from 1999. By the time, he co-founded Trivago he was surrounded by a whirlpool of entrepreneurial experience.
Vinnemeier also went to HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management and before that went to the University of Illinois, Chicago. He was also the co-founder and CTO of Ciao.com and left the company along with Schroemgens.
Siewert apart from co-founded Trivago also co-founded Monkish Equity. He is a Strategic Advisor at Well now.
The Beginning
Originating on the lands of Germany, Trivago N.V became the nation’s first website for searching hotels. The company was founded in January 2005 and the Expedia Group of America acquired a major stock of it after a few years. The company started with initial external funding of $1.2 million.
When the company was formed, Stubner was named the Managing Director. But, he quit both his position and company as well. The other three co-founders took the entire responsibility of making this hotel search engine famous.
Initially, the main investors of Trivago included Samwer brothers, Florian Heinemann and Christian Vollmann. But, in 2008 the more investors came in-house increasing the amount of funding. In 2008, Trivago raised $1.14 million from Series B funding led by HOWZAT Media LLC. This marked the starting of a new era.
Exponential Growth
Unlike most of the websites, Trivago didn’t rely on Google to drive traffic. The team decided to invest in the advertising sector and hence launched TV advertisements. The company didn’t follow any strict digital marketing strategies. Schroemgens, in an interview, said that there wasn’t much competition in the market when Trivago was formed. Thus, they relied on TV for expanding their audience and it worked out pretty well.
Once they started making a good amount of profit, they started pouring it to expand in other countries. The company sold one-fourth of it to a US investment fund in December 2010. The acquisition was made for $52.86 million. After a couple of years, the American company, Expedia Group declared that it would be buying a major stake in Trivago. The deal was officially completed in 2013 for $632 million.
Business Model
In 2015, Trivago announced that its annual revenue turned up to $573.4 million. And the sole reason behind it was Trivago’s business model. The company followed the cost-per-click business model. Since it is a site where users can compare hotel prices; every click signifies a certain amount of sum in Trivago’s pocket.
Advertisements
Every company invests in an advertisement. But, nothing can beat the success of Trivago’s ads brought by the famous ‘Trivago guy’ and the ‘Trivago girl’. The ‘Trivago guy’ especially got famous in India which is portrayed by Abhinav Kumar.
The Success
Trivago’s big acquisitions include Rheinfabrik (an app development company) and Base7booking (a part of this company was acquired). The company was listed in the NASDAQ exchange in December 2016.
Beating the competition in today’s market, Trivago is the largest hotel search engine site throughout the world. It compares the rate of more than 1 million hotels and has 250 booking sites.
Schroemgens said that the company will continue to invest more in TV advertisements.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more