Trivago

How it happened

Trivago is a German hotel-search and price-comparison site, majority-owned by Expedia, that became famous for its ubiquitous TV ads. It went public on Nasdaq in December 2016 at roughly a $3.9B valuation, and its shares climbed past $51 in 2017, pushing its market value above $5B. Heavy dependence on Google and Expedia for traffic, plus the pandemic's hit to travel, gutted the business, and the stock fell more than 90% to around $260M. Glassdoor reviews from Düsseldorf trace the decline from inside: employees pointed to strategy and team reshuffles every quarter, recurring layoff waves that swapped tenured staff for students and short-term contracts, and a product they felt had gone stale as rivals pulled ahead.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.