Trivago

Travel / hotel searchGermany

New to Unitard

📉 Public < $1B

Peak $5 BillionRecorded estimate

~-90%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2016
📈
Peak valuation
$5 Billion ’17
💔
Became a Unitard
2020
💸
Last valuation estimate
~$500M

Current status

Public (Nasdaq: TRVG)

The rise & fall

7 moments · 2005–2020

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2005

Founded in Düsseldorf

A German hotel price-comparison engine that will become famous for its inescapable TV ads.

Wikipedia

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

The peak: shares hit $51.41$5B

Seven months after listing, trivago's market value tops $5B.

Macrotrends

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

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 OfficerLinkedIn ↗
Rolf Schrömgens
co-founder & CEO (the founders met at HHL Leipzig)
Now Co-Founder at BRAFE SPACELinkedIn ↗
Peter Vinnemeier
co-founder & CTO
LinkedIn ↗
Malte Siewert
co-founder & managing director
No public profile matched
Stephan Stubner
co-founder (resigned as managing director shortly after launch)
Now Co-Host of StageTwo - Europe´s biggest University Startup Competition at Stage TwoLinkedIn ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (6)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard