Dennis Schaal

Rectifying the difficulties in shopping for hotels online is a tremendously complex problem given travelers' fickle nature -- a business trip today, a romantic escapade tomorrow -- and varying quality levels from property to property even within a given brand. Trivago at least recognizes what one of the main problems is in matching a traveler's hotel preferences with the right hotel and hopes to address it with a heftier bank account after conducting its IPO.

Overall, the initial day of trading amounted to a modest success for Trivago. Its founders made a bundle, it generated a couple of hundred million dollars for expansion, and its valuation crossed the $4 billion threshold -- even though it had hoped for much more and was undoubtably disappointed about the manner in which it debuted. This is a long game; verdicts now are meaningless.

Airlines and travel agents are Sabre Corp.'s most important constituencies -- other than shareholders -- and now the company has former airline executives serving as CEO and executive chairman of the board. These airline connections aren't the only reasons the board selected these executives but their experience certainly can't hurt.

The selection of Glenn Fogel as CEO is likely one that will please Wall Street as he represents stability and is highly regarded inside the travel industry and beyond it. Is it purely coincidence that the Group announces its CEO pick after eight months of looking, hours before Expedia's Trivago is slated to price its IPO? Probably not.

Is there a big enough market for travelers to track flights through push notifications and wait weeks or months to buy instead of going to a website and entering their itinerary details? Hopper, Hitlist, and others think Millennials and others will shop this way but there is skepticism about how large these businesses can become.

Trivago is saturating certain markets with TV advertising. Google Trends data suggest this may not be as effective as the company wants investors to surmise.

Google has fought and annoyed TripAdvisor and Yelp for years when it comes to user reviews. The search giant obviously has the scale to compete and is now putting new emphasis on its own user reviews, but it has to prove it has the focus to upend the review balance of power.

As TripAdvisor evolves into more of a booking site than it is today, it makes total sense over the long term for it to get increasingly interested in corporate travel. Business travelers yearn for that elusive perfect trip, too.

Prospective nominee Major Gen. John Kelly as Department of Homeland Security secretary certainly has experience in border protection and could play a key role if President-Elect Trump cracks down on immigration, illegal and legal. Kelly's views on airport security and the TSA have yet to be articulated but privatization efforts would not be surprising.

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.