AI was supposed to kill hotel price comparison. Trivago just grew 15% in Europe.
trivago's revenue from hotel clicks rose 15% in Europe and the Americas last quarter. AI still brings Booking Holdings less than 1% of its room nights.
by Markus Busch
What trivago reported. On November 3, trivago posted its third quarter. Revenue rose 16% to €192.5 million, its seventh straight quarter of double-digit growth. Referral revenue, the money OTAs and hotels pay when a traveler clicks through to book, grew 15% in both Developed Europe and the Americas. Adjusted EBITDA was the highest since mid-2023, and trivago now expects around €45 million of it in 2027. Net income halved, to €5.4 million, mostly because last year's quarter carried a one-off gain of €3.2 million.
Where the clicks come from. trivago says more travelers are coming to it directly: typing the name, opening the app, searching for "trivago." That traffic grew faster than the total, which trivago credits to years of brand advertising. Its own checkout, Book & Go, more than doubled its share of referral revenue. The one region that shrank was Rest of World, down 10%, which trivago puts down to the conflict in the Middle East.
The same quarter at Booking Holdings. Booking Holdings reports Kayak, its own price comparison brand, inside a line called advertising and other revenues, together with OpenTable. In the third quarter that line rose 8%, to $332 million. In August, the same company told investors that traffic from AI assistants was well under 1% of its room nights, and had barely moved in quarters.
Who is bidding less. The two big OTAs now pay a smaller share of trivago's revenue. Booking Holdings brands accounted for 38% of trivago's referral revenue, down from 44% a year earlier. Expedia brands fell to 27%, from 30%. The pie grew while their slices shrank.
The limits. trivago bought its growth. Advertising spend for its core business rose 12%, to €137.1 million, and every euro of it brought back €1.33 in referral revenue. All the figures here are the companies' own. Google doesn't report what it earns from hotel ads, so this is two comparison businesses, not the whole channel. And it's one quarter.
What it means for hotels. If you're being pitched an AI visibility package paid for out of your metasearch budget, pull the last twelve months from your booking engine: bookings, revenue and cost from Google Hotel Ads, trivago and any other comparison site. Put that next to what the AI package promises, in bookings, not mentions. The comparison sites grew in the same quarter AI was supposed to take their clicks.
Read also: Booking.com just told investors how little AI actually books · The search that used to send you a guest now keeps her
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