trivago’s brand investments yield positive results, nearing turning point to growth

• In the third quarter of 2024, we delivered solid brand revenue growth in our Developed Europe and Rest of World segments, maintaining their positive trajectory.

• In our Americas segment we faced temporary market headwinds, including softer demand and major sports and political events.

• Google Ad format changes continue to be a headwind, which we expect to gradually normalize by Q1 2025.

• We are excited to be approaching our turning point. We are well-positioned for growth this quarter and aim for sustainable growth next year.

“We are pleased to see solid brand revenue growth in our Developed Europe and Rest of World segments maintaining their positive trajectory. As we move into Q4, we’re seeing a return to typical seasonality patters and are excited to be approaching our turning point. trivago is well positioned for growth this quarter and looking ahead, we are optimistic about achieving sustainable growth next year.” – Johannes Thomas, CEO & Managing Director of trivago.

Financials Q3 2024

In the third quarter, our total revenue was 146.1 million euros, representing a 7% decline compared to the same period in 2023. In our Rest of World segment, referral revenues increased by 9%, while Developed Europe showed a 8% decline, which, although negative, is an improvement from the previous quarter. The Americas experienced a 14% decrease.

Our brand investment efforts are yielding positive results, particularly in Developed Europe and the Rest of World segments, where we achieved double-digit revenue growth from branded channel traffic year-over-year. In the Americas, temporary unfavorable market conditions affected our Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS), prompting a tactical reduction in brand marketing investments for this quarter. It’s important to note that our brand marketing investments are still at an early stage and relatively low compared to pre-COVID levels, presenting significant upside potential in the coming years.

Despite the positive branded revenue growth, we continued to face challenges in our performance marketing channels, primarily due to changes in Google’s advertising formats. These changes have introduced volatility and resulted in traffic volume losses. However, we have observed stabilization over the past few weeks, which is encouraging. We remain committed to a disciplined, opportunity-driven investment strategy and will not compromise long-term brand investments to offset performance marketing volume losses.

During the third quarter, we reported a net loss of 15.4 million Euros and achieved an Adjusted EBITDA of 13.6 million Euros, moving us closer to our full-year goal of breakeven Adjusted EBITDA. This performance exceeded expectations, primarily due to a conscious reduction in brand marketing spend in the Americas. The net loss was largely driven by a 30.0 million Euros impairment charge related to our annual intangible asset impairment analysis.

Following is a summary update on our key strategic focus areas as presented by CEO and Managing Director, Johannes Thomas, during the Earnings Conference Call on November 5, 2024.

Branded Growth

We strive to be top of mind for travelers booking hotels. We are encouraged by the positive returns on our brand marketing investments and are committed to advancing this trajectory. To further increase the impact of our investments, we have secured a partnership with Jürgen Klopp, as the face of our upcoming global marketing campaign. As a globally recognized football coach celebrated for his remarkable leadership, Klopp is celebrated worldwide for his smart personality and genuine, authentic character—qualities that perfectly align with our brand values. Klopp was carefully selected after comprehensive pre-testing. His resonance with trivago’s target audience surpassed that of other potential candidates, making him an ideal ambassador for the brand. The campaign will kick off with a master spot recorded in English, which will then be localized into various languages using advanced AI technology. This approach builds on trivago’s pioneering efforts in AI-driven marketing, first introduced in our brand campaign at the end of last year.

Best in Hotel Search

Our mission is to help travelers find their ideal hotel. We have significantly expanded our AI-powered Hotel Highlights, increasing our coverage from 120,000 to 250,000 hotels across eight languages in 27 markets. In doing so, we are enhancing our user’s experience by providing more relevant information with a particular focus on surfacing unique selling points of hotels. We’ve also introduced new personalization algorithms, improving the relevance of our hotel search results.

Best in Deal Discovery

We aim to help travelers find great deals and better prices. To that end, we’ve enhanced deal visibility with the expansion of ‘super savings’ to our apps and the introduction of ‘price drop’ deals which highlight recent price decreases of a hotel. We’ve further improved rate accuracy on our platform by incorporating partners’ full booking funnels, ensuring that the deals we present are current and still available. This is an important initiative as we continue to serve up more deals to our users.

Empower our Partners

We continued to improve our conversion rate by optimizing our marketing mix and enhancing our product. As a result, we anticipate that our advertisers will recognize these advancements and find us increasingly attractive as a marketing channel. This year, we successfully introduced a second-price auction to mitigate economic risk and reduce complexity of our marketplace, particularly for small and medium sized advertisers. We will continue to support our partners in optimizing their bids through our smart bidding solutions and aim to expand our trivago-branded ‘Book & Go’ funnel to more advertisers in the course of 2025.

Looking Ahead

We are encouraged by the progress we have made in the last quarter. And as we step into Q4, we are excited to be approaching our turning point, which could represent a major milestone in our journey to restore trivago’s position in the market. Our disciplined approach has kept us on track to achieve breakeven on a full-year basis in 2024, and we are confident in our ability to achieve double-digit growth in the medium term.

trivago has continued to provide high quality traffic to our partners, and we are optimistic about regaining advertiser appreciation over time. The upcoming global marketing campaign is another reason for optimism, as we believe it will further solidify trivago’s position in the market, and ensure our brand remains top of mind for travelers looking to book a hotel.

We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to our dedicated employees, whose hard work and commitment have been essential to our progress. We look forward to continuing our journey of success together!

For more detailed information on our third quarter results, please visit our Investor Relations page: ir.trivago.com.

Media Contact:

naomi.mnyamana@trivago.com