trivago N.V.

The company was founded in Düsseldorf, Germany, in January 2005. Seeing an opportunity in the hotel search space, the founding team developed Germany's first hotel search engine. Shortly after launch, Stephan Stubner resigned as Managing Director, but the three other founders (Rolf Schrömgens, Peter Vinnemeier and Malte Siewert) remained.

Initially, Trivago received €1 million from investors, including the Samwer brothers, Florian Heinemann, and Christian Vollmann. In 2007, Trivago received US$ 1.14 million in Series B funding from the British company HOWZAT media LLP. In December 2010, Trivago sold a quarter of the company for US$52.86 million to a US investment fund, Insight Venture Partners.

In December 2012, Expedia, an American travel company, announced that it would acquire a stake in Trivago for $632 million. The deal was completed in 2013.

In December 2014, Trivago acquired mobile app product and development company Rheinfabrik. After the acquisition, Rheinfabrik remains independent from Trivago in its work.

In 2015, Trivago reported more than US$500 million in revenue.

In March 2016, Trivago announced it had acquired a portion of Cloud-PMS company Base7booking.

On December 16, 2016, Trivago became publicly traded on the American NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol TRVG.

On November 5, 2019, CEO Rolf Schrömgens announced he will step down at the end of the year and be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Axel Hefer.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trivago had to cut many jobs. In March 2020, sales had fallen by 95% compared to the previous year.