Online hotel search platform, Trivago reported earnings after the
close on Wednesday, the company did fall short of
estimates on the top and the bottom lines. But
despite the miss, the company is saying global travel
demand on its platform continued to be robust in the
first quarter after a strong 2022. Well, looking
ahead to this peak summer season, the company says
its monetization levels will be at the lowest levels lower
levels than last year. So joining me now is
axel. He first ceo of Trivago axel. Thanks
so much for joining as always, what was behind
these results and should investors be more optimistic? Yeah
, we think that the the travel market is actually
strong. Um The the first quarter has seen solid
growth on our platform and we we expect actually this
summer to be pretty strong despite the concerns that you
hear everywhere um about inflation about higher prices. What
we see is that that consumers are actually mitigating um
these price increases by doing various things. I mean
, the we just run a survey in the US
where where more than 60% of the respondents said that
they are actually comparing more prices online than they have
done before. But what's even more interesting is that
um that the people are not only cutting their trips
slightly short, but they are also going to cheaper
destinations. And so if you look at the US
traveler, they are going more to Mexico in America
and more to Turkey and Europe and less to Canada
and the UK, so similar experience but cheaper destination
. Interesting. Ok. So I guess we talked
a bit about geography there just in terms of consumers
trying to save money, but in terms of sales
across regions, right? A I mean, you
do have a global company. Are there certain locations
where you're seeing certain regions where you're seeing stronger demand
than others? I think this will be the year
of Asia, to be honest. Yeah. So
for our travel business, um Asia is back,
China is back, um Japan is back and um
and, and we see there are exactly the same
thing that we've experienced um in the US in Europe
last year and the year before that there is a
huge um pan up demand where people want to see
their friends, they want to see their relatives,
they want to see business partners. And we expect
a very strong recovery across Asia. How does that
translate? Excuse me to your results? Because I
do see the stock actually closed up 1.7% today,
but we have seen shares under pressure of late.
Yeah, I mean, the summer is obviously the
the the peak season. Um and that's where you
will make or not make your, your annual targets
. Um Most of the, the big countries that
I just talked about are in the northern hemisphere.
So, so they have the summer coming and,
and um and the summer has not, not happened
already. Um for China, we don't operate in
China, but it's a very important destination for a
lot of our platforms. So for South Korea,
for Taiwan, for Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan
as well, it's a very important destination. Japan
is obviously part of this. It's a very attractive
destination to travel to and also has a lot of
um people that want to travel abroad. So we
expect that to materialize in summer. Artificial Intelligence Axle
has been a big topic of conversation on Wall Street
and really across corporate America. This year, a
lot of companies trying to use it to make their
businesses more efficient, especially in a potentially recessionary environment
. Is your company exploring A I? And if
so how I mean A I has been a core
part of our business. I mean, since inception
, to be honest, I mean, the all
the the algorithms that are basically um determining whether um
whether to show one hotel or the other um which
prices are, how attractive to consumers. I mean
, these are all machine learning algorithms. Um The
, the thing that is new is is obviously um
that, that um conversations are now much easier and
that content generation can happen at a level that it
was not possible before. And I think that will
be particularly relevant for really content generation on websites.
And that's something we are looking into, of course
, but it will be even more relevant for uh
websites that offer inspiration of where to travel to,
when to travel to. Um And uh there will
be, will be a big game changer over the
, the month and the years to come.