Expedia, a full service online travel agency with localized sites in 30 countries, has announced the completion of its acquisition of 61.6% of trivago GmbH, a hotel metasearch company. Following this acquisition, trivago will continue to operate independently from its headquarters in Dusseldorf, Germany.
For this majority package in trivago Expedia paid approximately €434 million in cash (equivalent of USD 564 million) and will issue in the next five years a total of 875,200 shares of Expedia, Inc. common stock.
“Metasearch is an incredibly popular product because it enables consumers to find their ideal hotel at the lowest possible rate. The trivago team built one of the best hotel search user experiences and gained tremendous brand recognition in Europe. We are thrilled to officially welcome them to the Expedia, Inc. family,” explained Dara Khosrowshahi , Expedia, Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer.
“Our focus remains on rapidly growing revenue as we expand globally,” said Rolf Schromgens, trivago co-founder and Managing Director. “The ability to leverage Expedia’s knowledge of and experience with global scale operations will be invaluable to profitably achieve this goal,” added Schromgens.
With this acquisition, Expedia further expands its services and consolidates its position as a full service online travel agency that drives direct bookings and offers advertisers various ways to reach a wide travel-focused audience through Expedia Media Solutions. Expedia recently launched a semantic search engine for travel. trivago is an online hotel search website which compares prices from more than 600,000 hotels on over 150 booking sites worldwide. The site also provides reviews – has 34 million such review right now – and 14 million photos.
