Traveling Made Easy With Trivago

The tech department at this company must be populated with some serious brainpower, as they have devised a way to scan all of these booking sites (which each have their own software, of course) to present a list for you of hotels that meet your requirements, listed conveniently by price. The listings are accompanied by photos of the hotels, and all you need to do is click the “view deal” button and you will be sent on a magic carpet ride to a booking site where you can complete your study of the hotel and your reservation.

 
Let’s make your search a little more difficult, and see if Trivago can accommodate you. Let’s say you’re booking a trip for a group, and need to search for multiple rooms to accommodate multiple travelers. The firm will support a search for rooms for children or for groups by having you select, intuitively, “Children, Groups” as your room type and then select the number of rooms you need, along with the number of people per room. Their search engine will trigger those 260 other booking site (as of press time) search engines, and do the rest. Let’s take a closer look at this remarkably convenient site.

Major Website Features

Those 260 booking sites (as of press time) were chosen carefully, and they cover the globe quite comprehensively, with the overwhelming majority of the planet’s online hotel market included. The firm set out to provide its users with the most inclusive overview of the hotel market possible. They have succeeded in showing all available online deals and thereby enabling you to book the least expensive hotel rates that can be had. For proof, we have found that the site is able to show the current available rates for over 731,367 hotels worldwide (as of press time). That’s quite a number.

The company makes clear that even though they perform many related functions, their job is a singular one – they are a comprehensive search engine. As a result, they do not get involved in the booking process. That’s between you and the hotel that you never would have found without Trivago. The company therefore assumes no financial responsibility for the transaction you pursue with any hotel.

Even though they have no financial responsibility, the site performs a background check on each hotel company to determine whether those companies honor their online deals. While no guarantees are offered, the site does block the display of any hotel site deals that does not pass this “integration check” or where they receive reports indicating that the hotel site is unreliable. They will still display the hotel site itself, but they do so with maximum transparency, showing a rating score for each hotel site, and recommending that you take further steps to investigate. More simply, if that score is too low, you might want to simply choose a hotel with a higher rating.

As much as they do for you, it is important to note what the company, as a search engine aggregator, is not in a position to do, and they state prominently that they cannot sent a new booking confirmation if you fail to receive one after booking. As a search engine, they have no access to confirmations, so you will need to work with the hotel booking site (oh, and check your spam folder first – it’s probably in there). By the same token, they are not able to cancel or change a hotel reservation. That too needs to be done through the booking site or directly with the hotel.

Prices

This one is easy. You don’t pay a dime to this company for the online matchmaking services they perform between you and the hotel of your dreams, or at least the hotel that will not occupy your nightmares. There is also no requirement to register. The firm receives a commission from each of the booking sites that they cover, and that’s how they make their money.

Customer Service

The site goes beyond aggregating all those booking sites and performing search functions, and has also engineered its software to present prices that include all taxes and fees that you would incur on each individual booking site. On the “view all prices” button for each hotel, you will also find the rate information for all the facilities that are, or aren’t, included in that price, such as, for example, breakfast and the cancellation policy. They do advise you to reconfirm all of this information once you have made a selection and clicked through to the booking site.

Want to know if breakfast is included? The site offers a charming “teacup” icon under the “view all prices” button, which indicates that breakfast is or is not included, although they don’t drill down all the way to whether the hotel has those wonderful waffle machines (our main reason for going on vacation).

And for those who are disabled, Trivago enables you to determine which hotels are wheelchair accessible through the use of a filter option presented on the left side of the screen. Under “hotel features,” just click for “wheelchair accessible.” By the way, you can do that even if you are not wheelchair-bound, to better support hotels that serve this community.

Oh, and pet lovers are able to search for pet-friendly hotels, again through the use of the site’s filter options. Why shouldn’t Fido also benefit from this company’s powerful functionality?

While the site’s default search is by popularity, it is a matter of a few clicks to switch to a search that presents results based on price. After entering your destination and travel dates, at the top of the page you will see a pulldown menu that will sort the list of hotels by price. Those left-side filters can then also be employed to select a maximum price ceiling. Then you won’t get too depressed seeing how the rich live.

Criticisms

We couldn’t find very many at all, although there may well be some low-rated hotels that aren’t too happy about having their low ratings trumpeted around the globe. There were some complaint about being forwarded to the wrong hotel, and the site indicates that they are constantly working to eliminate this kind of Internet “link rot.” Most comments, however, express gratitude and appreciation to the form for making something inherently complicated quite a bit simpler.

Final Thoughts

What’s not to love? The idea of aggregating booking sites is one that speaks for itself, and Trivago has implemented the concept in a manner that is seamless, highly effective and customer-responsive. With its commission structure allowing visitors to enjoy its services completely free of charge, more and more travelers are turning to the firm’s website to find the hotels they need.

It is important to remember, however, that you are not dealing with a booking site, but with a site that connects 260 of those sites (as of press time), and that you must direct all of your actual booking activities to one of those sites. But for the job of finding the hotel you want, and confirming that it has all of the amenities you require, including of course the right price, Trivago is becoming a go-to site. Go and see for yourself!