TRIVAGO, ANSWER TO SEARCH FOR AN IDEAL HOTEL
As the travelseason approaches, a major part of planning is to search for an ideal hotel tostay at the holiday destinations. Globally today, the internet has torevolutionise a lot of operations that people perform before and duringtravelling, one such platform that facilitated hotel search according to thecustomised need of each traveller is Trivago. The digitally facilitatedsuccessful startup has become of the top choices to compare and choose a spacewhere one would like to spend their quality holiday time.
Trivago, a namethat is when breaking down in three parts "tri" "va" and "go" means depart inthree different languages where "tri" is French, "va" is Spanish and "go" isEnglish. The hotel search platform and a successful startup, Trivago aims toassist user find an ideal hotel at the best price has been remodelling thetraveller's process of searching and comparing. Conceptualised in 2005 by threevisionaries who happen to be university friends Rolf Schrömgens, PeterVinnemeier and Stephan Stubner in a garage, like most start-ups' firstiteration site.
Almost a yearafter its initiation, in 2006, one of the co-founders Stephan decided to pursuea career in education and become a professor and that's when Malte Siewertjoined the founding team. The brand received positive feedback when it startedits operations in the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. The founders spotted theopportunity in the hotel search space and developed Germany's first hotelsearch engine. An initiative like Trivago got positive reviews and received €1million from investors. These investors who trusted the travel booking platformincluded the Samwer brothers, Florian Heinemann, and Christian Vollmann.
Acquisitions and Investments over the Year
Over the years,the brand received funding from different investors including receiving US$1.14million in Series B funding from the British company HOWZAT media LLP in 2008.The brand sold a quarter of the company for US$52.86 million to a US investmentfund, Insight Venture Partners in 2010. Expedia in 2012 announced that it wouldacquire a stake in Trivago for $632 million. Trivago acquired mobile appproduct and development company Rheinfabrik that remains independent after theacquisition in 2014. It acquired a portion of Cloud-PMS Company Base7booking in2015.
Business Model
Being an onlinehotel price comparison platform, the successful startup Trivago's businessmodel includes using a cost-per-click (CPC) as it is associated with varioushotels as an advertising partner. Hoteliers and booking platforms rates andadvertise on Trivago and pay for the clicks received from user online.
It also offersfree and fee-based versions of its Hotel Manager product, which hoteliers useto market their facilities on the Trivago site. Claiming to be one of theworld's largest online hotel search site, the successful startup, Trivagocompares rates from over 1 million hotels and more than 250 booking sitesworldwide.
Since theirmajority shareholder is Expedia, the effort is to direct bookings to theirsites by way of various "adjustments" to how other sites' rates areperceived. They also offer rates through many sites reselling for travelwholesalers, where rooms may or may not be available at time of booking.
Marketing a Successful Startup
Trivago has aunique and creative marketing campaign. The brand aired its first U.S. TVadvertisement in 2012 and the unusual looking spokesman for the ad turned intoa trending hashtag i.e. #trivagoguy. The brand needed someone who is someonereal, approachable and genuine to represent their brand when it chose actor TimWilliams to star in the ad.
The brand alsohas Spanish and French "Trivago Guy" following the large response the U.S."Trivago guy" received a great response which led it to become a crucial partof the marketing strategy for the successful startup Trivago. Various actorsfrom around the world have received unexpected popularity becoming "TheTrivago Guy", be it Latin America, the Spanish speaking region where
Trivago'scommercials are presented by Spanish actor Gonzalo Peña, or Brazil, where theman shown on screen is the well-known actor and model Willian Mello, or India,in 2016, the actor Abhinav Kumar also created a huge amount of publicity forthe brand by appearing ads as "The Trivago Guy". He also receivedpopularity and become an internet sensation for his role in ubiquitous Trivagoads in India.
The"Trivago girl" is also an important part of the marketing campaignfor this successful startup. Trivago was represented by various actressesaround the world to promote the successful startup where in the UK, anAustralian actress and musician Gabrielle Miller, in Japan, singer/songwriterNatalie Emmons, who uses the pseudonym "Strae" in the United States,and in Malaysia, actress and TV host Dahlia Shazwan starred in Trivago'sadvertisements.
Having various features of an successful startup, the Trivago platform allows travellers to have a platform where they can filter from thousands of hotels by their rating, price, and various facilities Wi-Fi, pool, room facilities, child friendly and many others which makes the startup is not only successful one in one country but globally.
