How Trivago Can Help Boost Your Hotel's Direct Bookings

by Joelo Wery Web Developer, Blogger and Artist

Trivago is becoming hugely popular as of late, especially since they’re currently investing a lot of money into marketing campaigns.

Update August 2017: After the popularity of this post, I have created a bonus blog on how to hack Trivago to get more bookings.

But what exactly is Trivago? It’s not an OTA (Online Travel Agent). It’s basically a meta-searcher. It takes a property and scrapes the internet for the different prices and brings them together.

Well, guess what, if you haven’t got a listing on Trivago hotels, you will still be on there. So, it’s better to have a listing so that you can make sure all the pictures and information is up to date.

This is because your property is still going to be viewed, but it won’t necessarily be what you want customers to see.

So, what do you need to do?

1.Get rid of any old pictures! Add new pictures and give them all a category.

2. Make sure all information is new information!

3. Make sure the link is correct!

4. Make sure the types of rooms are correct and add all your different types of rooms.

After that, it’s time to do a little research. Trivago is like any other online website. The basic listing is free of charge. But if you want to add your own website to the search results, you need to pay. This is where Direct Connect or Pro Package comes in. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee, so it’s a case of setting your budget.

Trivago Hotel Manager

This is a feature of the pro package. I’ve personally heard mixed reviews of this. Some people like it, and some don’t. But, basically, the benefits you get when you take the pro package are (1) you’re able to add your latest news, and (2) you can put your contact details on the website.

So, in my opinion, it’s not worth it. It’s a waste of money. Instead, I’d look into the direct connect package.

Direct Connect Package

This is the package that allows you to add your own listing. This would add your price from your website on the list along with all the OTA’s prices and then compare them.

Now, you may be wondering why that would be necessary since you have the same price everywhere online. Well, they’re very smart about this. They will add the cheapest option. So that would be the price during special offers, or the price for a single person, or even the price before VAT is added.