Trivago’s TV-heavy advertising strategy is clearly working. The hotel search engine recorded spectacular Australian online growth during January – increasing its unique audience by 95% to 1.7m – giving Trivago second position in the ‘Hotel Information’ sub-category of the Nielsen Digital Ratings survey.
But out and out sector leader Booking.com continues to dominate with a 35% month on month increase (from a much higher base) taking its unique audience to just over 3m, absolutely smashing the competition.
Airbnb was up 26% to 1.6m, while Wotif grew its unique audience 9% to 1.4m. The category grew 19% between December and January to a total unique audience of 7.5m.
| Name | Unique Audience (000) | MoM (%) Increase |
| Booking.com | 3,042 | 35% |
| Trivago | 1,726 | 95% |
| Airbnb | 1,601 | 26% |
| Wotif.com | 1,404 | 9% |
| Hotels.com | 932 | 44% |
Source: Nielsen Digital Ratings (Monthly) – January 2017
As usual there were no major hotel brands among the most popular accommodation sites.
It was a different story in cruise, however, where the top three slots were owned by cruise lines.
| Name | Unique Audience (000) | MoM (%) Increase |
| Princess Cruises | 587 | 11% |
| Royal Caribbean Cruises | 515 | -1% |
| P&O Cruises | 485 | 34% |
| Ozcruising | 384 | 75% |
| Cruisecritic.com | 382 | 35% |
Source: Nielsen Digital Ratings (Monthly) – January 2017
Nielsen pegs the total unique online cruise audience for January at 2.6m.
*Bloomberg report last week that in the fourth quarter of 2016, Trivago, recently listed on Nasdaq, spent most of its global revenue on marketing – 136.7 million euros out 169.2 million – much of that on TV ads that have driven very high brand recognition in its key markets.