One of the key remaining questions is whether Southwest will start offering its flights for bookings on online travel agencies. The betting here is that Southwest won't allow Expedia or Priceline to get on board.
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.
Could Trivago be looking to supplement its traditional metasearch revenue with that generated by a hotel booking site? Or is it just interested in Holisto's tech?
Twenty years later, Google is the leading global player in travel metasearch. Steve Hafner can do little about that but argues travelers can snack on Google but they should come to Kayak for better results when they are ready to book.
Less localization is the tradeoff that Trivago is seemingly willing to live with as it uses AI to avoid having to pay TV pitch people in each of its markets.
Just as online travel companies experiment with new features on their website pages, Trivago does something similar with its TV ads. Too soon to tell which ones will make the cut.
Will AI replace the Tim Williams (Trivago Guy) and William Shatner (the Priceline Negotiator) types? Could be. Trivago, meanwhile, is already testing a second AI-infused commercial.