Trivago Forecasts Slower Growth and ‘Difficult’ Quarters in 2018
Photo Credit: The hotel search company released a new corporate brand-mark on February 7, 2018. Pictured are employees looking at the design. Trivago
Skift Take
It seems that Priceline Group's recent pullback from advertising on Expedia-backed Trivago may be a new normal. In a brutal move, Booking.com pulled almost entirely out of Trivago's search listings in Germany and Italy in December.
The worst volatility is behind it. That's the spin executives at Trivago put on their hotel search company's fortunes during a fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.
In the second half of 2017, Priceline Group experimented with significantly reduced spending on Trivago as a marketing channel. That dented the revenues of the company.
As context, Priceline Group rival Expedia Inc. owns a majority of the equity and the voting rights at Trivago. So competitive motives may partly explain the move.
Chief executive Rolf Schrömgens told investment analysts that Trivago would face "difficult quarters financially" in the coming year. But he said the unpleasant surprises of 2017 — and the accompanying "full bandwidth of emotions" — are over.
"Extreme Testing"
Schrömgens said that the major advertisers on Trivago appear to have settled upon "a baseline."
A new "stability" at which they spend on Trivago has appeared at the end of a fourth quarter in which some advertisers c
