The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2005
🌱
2005
Founded in Düsseldorf
A German hotel price-comparison engine that will become famous for its inescapable TV ads.
Wikipedia
Dec 2016
🦄
Dec 2016
Nasdaq IPO — joins the club at ~$3.9B$3.9B
The TV-ad-fueled hotel search engine lists in New York in December 2016.
CNBC
Jul 2017
📈
Jul 2017
The peak: shares hit $51.41$5B
Seven months after listing, trivago's market value tops $5B.
Macrotrends
2018
2018
The ad machine sputters
Growth stalls as the model's heavy dependence on Google — and on majority owner Expedia — for traffic is exposed.
CNBC
2018–24
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2018–24
Glassdoor reviews from Düsseldorf traced the long slide from inside: employees described strategy and team reshuffles nearly every quarter, layoff waves that swapped tenured staff for students and short-term contracts, and a product they felt had gone stale as rivals pulled ahead.
2020
💔
2020
Slips out of the club
The pandemic's travel freeze finishes what Google dependence started; market value falls below $1B on its way to a 90%+ drawdown.
Macrotrends
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
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.
Source: CNBC / stockanalysis / Macrotrends (~$3.9B Dec 2016 IPO, ATH $51.41 July 2017 ~$5B; ~$258M market cap by 2025, -90%+; majority-owned by Expedia)
Founders & leadership
Johannes Thomas
Managing Director & CEO
Still there — Chief Executive Officer · LinkedIn ↗
RS
Rolf Schrömgens
co-founder & CEO (the founders met at HHL Leipzig)
