Inside Story of How Trivago Built a Brand One Country at a Time
Photo Credit: Trivago co-founder and CEO Rolf Schrömgens, shown in the company's promotional IPO video, believes the company can become the premier player in hotel search. Trivago / Trivago
Skift Take
There's little question that Trivago is going to get very big in coming years. Whether it can turn on a profitability gene, and whether its stock price tanks or zooms after it goes public, will be up to the market to decide.
Now that Trivago's co-founders and CFO are heading out on their IPO roadshow to sell the company's merits to investors, they are spilling secrets on how and why they built the brand the way they did.
It's an interesting tale from the Dusseldorf, Germany-headquartered hotel metasearch site when you compare it to the construction of fellow European rival and partner Booking.com, especially as Trivago CEO Rolf Schrömgens said, "We don't see a limitation right now" in the company's potential growth and that Trivago aspires to be "the player" in hotel search.
Trying to Cut Out Google
Founded in 2005 and having only taken about $1.2 million in external funding in its history [Expedia bought out pre-existing investors when it took a 63.5 percent stake in the company four years ago], Trivago decided in 2008 that it would try TV advertising to build its brand because relying on Google and other search engines to deliver traffic would be too risky.
"We soon realized we need to be the f
