Strategic Focus on Retention of Price-Savvy Travelers

Since 2009, we have invested billions in building our brand, across more than 50 countries. Our intention was to diversify our marketing away from Google and transition offline travelers to the online realm. We learned that TV marketing worked particularly well for us because our differentiated meta and price-oriented messaging made our ads very effective. We are excited to observe the enduring appeal and relevance of our meta proposition. Rate disparity has increased since the pandemic, which has elevated the relevance of comparing prices.

Our data illustrates that most travelers book only a few trips per year, and when they do, they use multiple sites. This finding supports the general industry view that there is limited loyalty to a single travel site. From a broader perspective, this appears to be true, although it’s important to emphasize that there are sub-segments of users that are more likely to be loyal to an offering that matches their needs best. One attractive traveler segment seems to prioritize convenience and has a higher likelihood of becoming loyal to a particular booking platform over time. Another segment is price-savvy shoppers who like to compare prices and need to know they’re getting a great deal. Through our broad brand marketing efforts, we effectively reach a range of different customer segments that we connect with our advertising partners.

In recent months, we have intensified our focus on retaining price-savvy users. Our strategy includes continuously enhancing our core comparison product and introducing new functionalities, such as price alerts, to better meet their needs. We are excited to share more about our strategic direction, specifically highlighting our recent investment in Holisto which we believe will play an important role in our future growth.

Simplifying Our Comparison Experience

We compare hundreds of booking sites across 53 localized platforms in 31 languages, providing one of the most comprehensive hotel price comparisons available. This scope enables users to find great deals and savings of up to 40% when using our US platform. However, the vast number of our advertisers, ranging from regional companies to global players, can at times overwhelm our users, and unfamiliar booking sites can cause uncertainty. The differing experiences on advertiser landing pages can cause an inconsistent user experience.

For a single hotel, we often compare dozens of rates from different booking sites. Our user research indicates that this breadth of rates can be distilled to a few truly valuable ones. To simplify our comparison experience and to increase the confidence in the decision-making of our users, we will explore ways to highlight the most relevant options more prominently to our users.

For illustrative purposes, this screenshot demonstrates a potential direction: each hotel listing would show a known OTA option, the hotel site and a wholesale rate. In this example our wholesale partner is leveraging our “trivago Book & Go” booking funnel.

Improving Our User Journey Through Expansion of “trivago Book & Go”

We are pleased to announce trivago’s strategic investment in Holisto, an AI-driven travel tech platform that serves as a hotel rate aggregator and white-label booking engine provider. The company has been an advertising partner on trivago since 2015. In 2022, we partnered with them on “trivago Book & Go,” a co-branded booking funnel developed and hosted by Holisto. This initiative proved successful, increasing their conversion rates and growing their market share. In the US they have become a Top 5 advertiser and globally rank among the Top 10 on our platform. This partnership demonstrated their technical capabilities and the strength of the team.

The facilitated booking funnel “trivago Book & Go” was developed by Holisto, our exclusive partner in this context. We aim to make this product available to all advertising partners and are expanding our brand licensing agreement with Holisto. As previously mentioned, our goal is to simplify the user experience for our core price-savvy users. The co-branded booking funnel will enable our partners to convert more lookers into bookers and create a more consistent experience on trivago. Partners will also benefit from additional visibility among our price-savvy members.

We are also planning to extend our exclusive deals offering to signed-on members, incentivizing them to choose trivago over other search engines. Holisto’s competitive rates will be a strong asset in providing more tailored deals to these core users.

Looking forward to our journey together, Holisto!

Founded in 2015, Holisto continues to be led by its founders and operates independently. The team comprises about 250 people working from its headquarters in Israel and in other global locations. Historically, Holisto’s strategy has been focused on the US market, where it has shown consistent growth and become a relevant player in the travel space.

 

“We are thrilled to further strengthen our partnership with trivago, leveraging Holisto technology to enhance their booking experience and entire marketplace. This collaboration will allow us to showcase our capabilities and drive value to travelers across trivago`s global platform.” adds Eran Shust, CEO of Holisto.

 

The Holisto team has developed a robust tech platform that leverages advanced AI and ML algorithms to optimize the real-time aggregation of hotel rates from a vast network of rate suppliers. They use caching and behavioural pattern learning to reduce the need for frequent direct supplier queries, addressing industry challenges like API call limitations and slow response times. This technological approach not only improves operational efficiency but also ensures that Holisto offers highly competitive and accurate pricing.

For Media queries contact:

naomi.mnyamana@trivago.com