Happenings
Your Top 5 Questions About trivago Answered
We’ve gotten so many questions about our metasearch, how it works and how it’s been changing over the past year during interviews with potential candidates – that’s why we’ve decided to answer the top 5 frequently asked questions for you below. These answers might come in handy whenever you’re interviewing with us, so get your notepad ready!
1. How does trivago plan to develop the product in the current pandemic, and beyond?
trivago was relatively quick to react and adapt to the new situation. We have been and continue supporting our business partners in the travel recovery and restart phases with customised plans and campaigns. When it comes to our users, we understood quite quickly that the way we travel and decide whether to go on a trip or not have changed dramatically, so we’re meeting this newness with changes and services on the main product, but also several product offerings throughout this year.
This year in particular, considering all the changes and constraints, we have adjusted our focus on 2 main areas: helping our users safely decide if and where to travel and building and preparing for travel after the pandemic. For more on this, head to our moredetailed candidate FAQs.
2. What other sources of revenue do you have other than CPC?
Our primary model is CPC (cost per click) generated through auction on our marketplace. Recently CPA (cost per acquisition) was introduced where we charge commission on a booking instead of charging per click. We are also experimenting and working with alternate revenue streams such as display ads.
3. How do you determine the order in which accommodations are listed in your search results?
In trivago we develop algorithms that display for each search in near-real time. The results reflect the search criteria of the user and our assessment of the attractiveness of the offer compared to other offers available on our site. It also reflects the compensation paid by the booking site. We are constantly working on developing new models and features that can improve the quality of results and better capture the user needs.
4. How are your product teams set up?
We work in cross-functional teams and the composition varies based on the scope or area of focus given. Within the scope given, each team is tasked with choosing the highest value problems or opportunities and then discovering the best way to solve them. So, for example, a user-facing team might have front-end developers, designers, QA engineers and support from a data analyst, whereas a back-end or service layer team might have cloud engineers and backend developers, QA engineers, data scientists and analysts.
5. What currently distinguishes trivago from its competitors?
We have a very broad offering of different accommodation types and prices, including all of the major Online Travel Agencies, hotel chains and alternative accommodation sources.
Our metasearch allows travelers to compare hotels and homes from the leading booking sites all in one place. With one search, travelers can compare different types of accommodation and hotels to find a great deal.
Do you have any questions we haven’t answered yet? Check out our other recent FAQ article or reach out to us on social media at @lifeattrivago.
