Trivago N : 2025 Dutch Statutory Annual Report

Annual report of trivago N.V. for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025 Table of Contents

Dutch Statutory Board Report

1. Introduction 2

2. Company and Business Overview 4

3. Financial Overview 15

4. Risk Management and Risk Factors 22

5. Corporate Governance 56

6. Compensation Report 69

7. Related Party Disclosures 70

8. Protective Measures 72

   Financial Statements 2025

9. Consolidated Financial Statements 74

10. Company Financial Statements 129

    Other Information

11. Other Information 142

11.5 Independent Auditor's Report 142

1. Introduction

   In this board report, the terms "we," "us," the "Company," or "trivago," or similar terms shall mean trivago N.V. and, as the context requires, its subsidiaries. References to "Expedia Group" mean our majority shareholder, Expedia Group, Inc., together with its subsidiaries. References to our "Founders" mean Rolf Schrömgens, Peter Vinnemeier and Malte Siewert, collectively.

   Unless otherwise specified, all monetary amounts are in euros. All references in this annual report to "$," "US$," "U.S.$," "U.S. dollars," "dollars" and "USD" mean U.S. dollars, and all references to "€" and "euros," mean euros, unless otherwise noted.

   1. Preparation

      This annual report has been prepared by trivago's management and has been approved by trivago's management board (the "management board") and trivago's supervisory board (the "supervisory board"). It contains (i) the Dutch statutory board report pursuant to Section 2:391 and 2:391a of the Dutch Civil Code ("DCC"), (ii) trivago's Dutch statutory annual accounts as defined in Section 2:361(1) DCC and (iii) the information to be added pursuant to Section 2:392 DCC (to the extent relevant). The financial statements included in sections 9 and 10 of this board report have been prepared in accordance with the IFRS Accounting Standards, as adopted by the European Commission ("EU IFRS") and Part 9 of Book 2 of the DCC. The report of trivago's independent auditor, EY Accountants B.V., is included in section 11.5. The Dutch Corporate Governance Code ("DCGC") recommends that the report includes separate reports from the management board and the supervisory board. The annual report does not include a separate supervisory board report but the board report includes the information that is required to be included in a supervisory board report.

   2. Special note regarding forward-looking statements

      This board report contains forward-looking statements, that are based on our management's beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. All statements other than present and historical facts and conditions contained in this annual report, including statements regarding our future results of operations and financial positions, business strategy, plans and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements. When used in this annual report, the words "aim," "anticipate," "assume," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "due," "estimate," "expect," "goal," "intend," "may," "objective," "plan," "predict," "potential," "positioned," "seek," "should," "target," "will," "would," and other similar expressions that are predictions of or indicate future events and future trends, or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about:

      • our ability to achieve the financial guidance we have provided for 2026, including revenue growth and profitability expectations;

      • the extent to which our strategy of increasing brand marketing investments positively impacts the volume of direct traffic to our platform and grows our revenue in future periods without reducing our profits or incurring losses;

      • the continuing negative impact of having ceased almost all television advertising in 2020 and only having resumed such advertising at reduced levels in recent years on our ability to grow our revenue;

      • our reliance on search engines, particularly Google, whose search results can be affected by a number of factors, many of which are not in our control;

      • the promotion by Google of its own products and services that compete directly with our hotel and accommodation search;

      • our continued dependence on a small number of advertisers for our revenue and adverse impacts that could result from their reduced spending or changes in their cost-per-click (CPC) bidding or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) campaign strategy;

      • our ability to generate referrals, customers, bookings or revenue and profit for our advertisers on a basis they deem to be cost-effective;

      • factors that contribute to our period-over-period volatility in our financial condition and result of operations;

      • the potential negative impact of a worsening of the economic outlook, inflation, or reduced consumer confidence on consumer discretionary spending for travel and accommodation;

      • any further impairment of goodwill;

      • impacts of the integration of acquired businesses, including trivago DEALS Ltd. (formerly Holisto Ltd.), and our ability to achieve expected benefits from such acquisitions;

      • geopolitical and diplomatic tensions, instabilities and conflicts, including war, civil unrest, terrorist activity, sanctions or other geopolitical events or escalations of hostilities, such as the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, continued regional instability in the Middle East, leading to airspace restrictions and fuel cost increases with resulting impacts on travel demand and flight availability, changes in U.S. tariff policy and other countries' responses thereto, or other developments resulting in heightened cross-border controls;

      • increasing competition in our industry;

      • the impact of rapidly evolving technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, on user search behavior, competitive dynamics, and our ability to maintain technological relevance;

      • our ability to innovate, integrate, and provide tools and services that are useful to our users and advertisers;

      • our business model's dependence on consumer preferences for traditional hotel-based accommodation;

      • our dependence on relationships with third parties to provide us with content;

      • changes to and our compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations;

      • the impact of any legal and regulatory proceedings to which we are or may become subject or which we may initiate, including our antitrust damages claim against Google seeking recovery for losses we contend were caused by Google's self-preferencing practices in the hotel search market, for which the timing, outcome or ultimate recovery is uncertain and due to which we expect to incur further significant legal costs; and

      • potential disruptions in the operation of our systems, security breaches and data protection.

      You should refer to the section 4.2 of this board report for a discussion of important risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. As a result of these factors, we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements in this annual report will prove to be accurate. Furthermore, if our forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. In light of the significant uncertainties in these forward-looking statements, you should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by us or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified time frame or at all. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

      You should read this board report and the documents that we reference in this board report completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.

2. Company and Business Overview

   1. History and development of the Company

      We were incorporated on November 7, 2016 as travel B.V., a private company with limited liability (besloten vennootschap met beperkte aansprakelijkheid) under Dutch law. On December 16, 2016, we completed our initial public offering, or IPO, on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. In connection with our IPO, we converted into a public company with limited liability (naamloze vennootschap) under Dutch law pursuant to a deed of amendment and conversion and changed our legal name to trivago N.V. On September 7, 2017, we consummated the cross-border merger of trivago GmbH into and with trivago N.V.

      We are registered with the Trade Register of the Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands (Kamer van Koophandel) under number 67222927. Our corporate seat is in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and our registered office is at Kesselstraße 5 - 7, 40221 Düsseldorf, Germany (under number HRB 79986). Our telephone number is [phone].

      As of December 31, 2025, we had 893 employees (prior year: 668 employees). The acquisition of trivago DEALS Ltd. resulted in an increase of 202 employees.

   2. Organizational structure

      The following chart depicts our corporate structure including significant subsidiaries and percentages of economic interest as of the date hereof based on the number of shares outstanding as of December 31, 2025:

      
      
      

      *Class A shares are held by the public shareholders and by the Founders. Based on the information available through public filings, Rolf Schrömgens, one of our founders and a member of our supervisory board owns: 34,483,930 Class A shares (F-3 filed on July 16, 2024).

      **As of December 31, 2025, Class B shares of trivago N.V. are only held by Expedia Group and Rolf Schrömgens.

      *** The holders of our Class B shares are entitled to ten votes per share, and holders of our Class A shares are entitled to one vote per share. Each Class B share is convertible into one Class A share at any time by the holder thereof, while Class A shares are not convertible into Class B shares under any circumstances.

      trivago N.V. is the direct or indirect holding company of our subsidiaries.

   3. Property, plant and equipment

      In June 2018, we moved into our headquarters located in Düsseldorf's media harbor. We currently occupy 18,632 square meters of office space, which has been certified with LEED core & shell Gold - representing a state-of-the-art workplace for trivago. The lease provides for a fixed ten-year term plus two renewal options, each for a term of five years. Initially, trivago N.V. was the sole tenant of the building and the building was, therefore, built to our specifications.

   4. Business Overview

      1. Overview

         trivago is a leading global hotel search and price comparison platform, and one of the most recognized travel brands in the world. When travelers search for a hotel, we want trivago to be the obvious choice. We help them find the best place to stay and deliver the best deal to book, saving time and money - so every traveler feels smart and confident about their booking. Powered by AI, we personalize and simplify hotel search for millions of travelers, connecting them with more than 7.0 million hotels and other accommodations across more than 190 countries.

         We believe that the number of travelers accessing our websites and apps makes us an important and scalable marketing channel for our advertisers, which include online travel agencies ("OTAs), hotel chains, independent hotels and providers of alternative accommodation. Additionally, our ability to refine user intent through our search function allows us to provide advertisers with transaction-ready referrals. Recognizing that advertisers on our marketplace have varying objectives and varying levels of marketing resources and experience, we provide a range of services to enable advertisers to improve their performance on our marketplace.

         Our search platform can be accessed globally via 53 localized websites and apps available in 31 languages. Users can search our platform on desktop and mobile devices, and benefit from a familiar user interface, resulting in a consistent user experience. We completed the strategic acquisition of Holisto Ltd (renamed to trivago DEALS Ltd) in July 2025. trivago DEALS is an AI-driven travel technology platform that serves as a hotel rate aggregator and white-label booking engine provider. The acquisition plays a pivotal role in enhancing user experience by expanding our trivago-branded booking funnel which will help us drive long term growth.

         In the year ended December 31, 2025, we generated revenue of €551.3 million and net profit of €8.8 million, compared to revenue of €460.8 million and a net loss of €4.1 million for the same period in 2024.

      2. trivago's search platform

         Our accommodation search platform forms the core of our user experience. It is a search and comparison product, and users usually complete their bookings on our advertisers' websites. When they click on an offer for a hotel room or other accommodation at a certain price, they are referred to our advertisers' websites where they can complete their booking. We also facilitate direct booking on our platform for select offers through our trivago DEALS business. We maintain one of the largest searchable databases of accommodations in the world. As of December 31, 2025, our database included more than 7.0 million hotels and other types of accommodations, including vacation rentals and private apartments, gathered through OTAs, hotel chains, independent hotels and providers of alternative accommodations.

         In order to create a superior search experience we cluster our user experience into the following pillars:

         • Search: We offer search functionalities which include destination based search, natural language based search powered by AI, and refinement options such as filters;

         • Deals: We help users compare prices across more than 100 booking sites and aim to highlight available offers to them. Refer to "Marketplace" below for how we determine the prominence given to offers and their placement in our search results;

         • Book: Our "Book & Go" functionality streamlines the user journey by enabling direct, on-platform bookings. By removing the need for third-party redirects, we significantly reduce friction, resulting in a superior user experience and improved conversion rates.

           We provide our services through websites and apps, including through our mobile-optimized website available on mobile device browsers. Our full-featured native mobile app is available on iPhone, iPad, Android Phone and Android Tablet.

      3. Marketing

         Through test-driven marketing operations, we have positioned our brand as a key part of the process for travelers in finding their ideal hotel or other accommodation. We focus the efforts of our marketing teams and Advertising Spend towards building effective and efficient messaging for a broad audience. We believe that building and maintaining our brand and clearly articulating our role in travelers' hotel or other accommodation discovery journey, will continue to drive both travelers and advertisers to our platform to connect in a mutually beneficial way.

         We have deployed the use of AI technology into our marketing campaigns enabling us to trial and experiment advertising strategies more extensively. For example, we have produced localized TV advertisements in more than ten different languages, all featuring the same actor, but uniquely tailored for each target market.

         Our application of data-led improvement and innovation also informs our marketing strategy, which we believe enables us to become increasingly more effective with our marketing spend. We have built tools that capture data and calculate our return on many elements of our brand and performance marketing measures.

         Brand marketing

         To grow brand awareness and increase the likelihood that users will visit our websites and use our apps, we invest in brand marketing globally across a broad range of media channels, including TV marketing, on demand video platforms and online video advertising. We also generate travel content as a means of engaging with travelers, which is distributed online via social media and email.

         The amount and nature of our Advertising Spend varies across our geographic markets, depending on multiple factors including the emphasis we wish to place on profitability versus traffic growth, cost efficiency, marginal effectiveness of our Advertising Spend, local media dynamics, the size of the market and our existing brand presence in that market.

         Branded channel traffic refers to traffic to our platform through: one of our localized platform websites, one of our downloadable mobile applications, branded search engine marketing channels (or "branded free traffic") for keyword searches that are inclusive of the trivago brand name, and/or paid keyword searches that include the trivago brand name, such as "trivago" or "trivago hotel".

         Performance marketing

         We market our services and directly acquire traffic for our websites by purchasing travel and hotel-related keywords (excluding keyword combinations inclusive of the trivago brand name) from general search engines (referred to as "search engine marketing") such as Google and Yahoo!, and through advertisements on other online marketing channels such as advertising networks, social media sites, and affiliate websites. We call this performance marketing channel traffic. Paid app marketing remains important given the increasing demand for app usage.

         Allocation of marketing spend

         We take a data-driven, testing-based approach to making decisions about allocating marketing spend, where we use tools, processes and algorithms, many of which are proprietary, to measure and optimize performance end-to-end, starting with the pretesting of the creative concept and ending with the optimization of media spend. We continue to develop the methodologies we use to inform decisions about how much we spend on each marketing channel. We look at a range of metrics including behavior on the trivago website as well as subsequent booking behavior with our advertisers to determine the optimal mix of spend. We assess the returns on marketing spend by looking at a range of factors, both short and long-term, including impact on Referral Revenue, user retention and advertiser engagement.

      4. Sales & Account Management

         Our sales and account management team builds and grows relationships with OTAs, hotel chains and other travel companies, including hospitality technology providers. From facilitating their participation in our marketplace to growing the adoption of our products, our dedicated teams provide ongoing consultation and guidance to our advertisers around CPC (cost-per-click) and CPA (cost-per-acquisition) bidding options, product updates, and optimization opportunities. We proactively engage with our advertisers to better understand their specific objectives in order to offer solutions through our marketplace.

         Independent hotels receive dedicated attention through our customer success team. With tailored solutions for hoteliers, we enable independent hotels to generate business insights and direct business through their official website by advertising their rates directly in our price comparison, allowing them to compete with the large OTAs and chains. Our team accompanies hoteliers throughout the sales cycle, from creating awareness about our products to onboarding them.

         Marketing tools and services for advertisers

         We offer our advertisers a suite of marketing tools to help promote their listings on our platform and drive traffic to their websites. Our tools and services provide tailored solutions for OTAs, hotel chains and independent hotel advertisers to help them manage their presence on our marketplace and steer their investments according to their budget and traffic needs.

      5. Marketplace

         We design our algorithm to display hotel room and other accommodation rate offers that we believe will be attractive to our users, emphasizing those offers that we believe are more likely to be clicked and ultimately booked on our advertisers' websites. We prominently display a suggested deal for each hotel, which is determined based on our algorithm as described below, while also listing additional offers made available to us from our advertisers in a list format.

         We consider the completion of hotel and other accommodation bookings, which we refer to as booking conversion, to be a key indicator of user satisfaction on our website. At the core of our ability to match our users' searches with large numbers of hotel and other accommodation offers is our auction platform, which we call our marketplace. With our marketplace, we provide advertisers a competitive forum to access user traffic by facilitating a vast quantity of auctions on any particular day.

         CPC Bidding Model

         Our advertisers continue to participate in our marketplace primarily through CPC, or cost-per-click, bidding. Advertisers that use this method submit CPC bids for an advertised rate for a hotel. CPC bids represent the maximum that an advertiser is willing to pay for a click. The price paid by the advertiser may ultimately be lower than the CPC bid submitted based on our dynamic auction model. By clicking on a given rate, an individual user is referred to that advertiser's website where the user can complete the booking. Advertisers can submit and adjust CPC bids on our marketplace frequently - as often as twice per day - on a property-by-property and market-by-market basis, and provide us with information on hotel room and other accommodation rates and availability on a near-real time basis. CPC bids can be adjusted upwards or downwards for a set of dimensions (length-of-stay, booking-window, standard-date, group-size) as determined by the advertiser.

         We also offer our advertisers the opportunity to advertise and promote their business through hotel/accommodation sponsored placements on our websites. This service is generally also priced on a CPC basis and guarantees that advertiser placement in a pre-selected slot typically at the top of our search results.

         Cost-per-acquisition model

         We also offer our advertisers the opportunity to participate in our marketplace on a CPA, or cost-per-acquisition, basis, whereby an advertiser pays us a percentage of the booking amount that ultimately result from a referral. The CPA model enables our advertisers to be charged only in the event a user ultimately completes a booking, enabling them to reduce their risk as they only pay when an actual booking takes place. Advertisers may set multiple CPA campaigns in a given market, and update CPA inputs for each campaign frequently. When an advertiser opts to participate in our marketplace on a CPA basis, we calculate a CPC bid-equivalent based on potential booking value, and the CPA inputs. This equivalent is then used for the purpose of the ranking and sorting algorithm described below. CPA inputs can be adjusted upwards or downwards relative to the booking-window dimension as determined by the advertiser.

         Ranking and sorting algorithm

         In determining the prominence given to offers and their placement in our search results, including in comparison search results for a given location and on detail pages for a given property, our proprietary algorithm considers a number of factors in a dynamic, self-learning process. These include (but are not limited to) the advertiser's offered rate for the hotel room or other accommodation, the likelihood the offer will match the user's accommodation search criteria, data we have collected on the likelihood an offer will be clicked and the CPC that our advertisers will be charged (or CPC bid-equivalent under the CPA model, as the case may be).

         CPC and CPA levels play an important role in determining the prominence given to offers and their placement in our search results. Advertisers can analyze the number of referrals obtained from their advertisements on our marketplace and the consequent value generated from a referral based on the booking value they receive from users referred from our site, to determine the amount they are willing to pay. Generally, the higher the potential booking value or booking conversion generated by a referral and the more competitive the bidding, the more an advertiser is willing to bid for an accommodation advertisement on our marketplace. This means that the levels of advertisers' CPC bids generally reflect their view of the likelihood that each click on an offer will result in a booking by a user. We exclude from our marketplace auction offers where the CPC has been set to a de minimis level, as

         this typically denotes room inventory that the advertiser has withdrawn for some period of time from its active inventory on trivago.

         By managing their CPC bids, their CPA campaigns and hotel room and other accommodation rates submitted on our marketplace, our advertisers can influence their own returns on investment and the volumes of referral traffic we generate for them. We believe that by providing services to help our advertisers, we can increase competition and create a more level playing field for our advertisers. By doing this, we aim to mitigate competitive disadvantages for smaller advertisers on our marketplace and to deliver more choice for our users.

      6. Our strategy

         When travelers are searching for a "Hotel?" we want the obvious choice to be "trivago". We aim to simplify their planning, help them save, and instill confidence in their booking decisions. The value proposition of trivago is highly relevant as consumers continue to be price-conscious, great deals continue to be available and the trivago brand is well-recognized globally. To accelerate this potential, we are rapidly adopting AI to amplify our marketing and improve our product and innovate faster, allowing our team to scale our impact significantly, without expanding our workforce. This provides a strong foundation for us to build upon. We maintain our focus on the following three strategic priorities to drive our success.

         Brand

         Our focus remains on brand initiatives designed to rebuild our branded visitor baseline, which is viewed as key for long-term growth. Our approach is result-oriented: investing where response is strongest and continuously optimizing our budget allocation as well as our ads. We believe these efforts will enhance the efficiency of our marketing investments and allow compounding effects to materialize over the long term. Furthermore, we are amplifying AI technologies in content production, which allows us to maintain efficiency in production costs.

         Going forward, we will continue to invest in brand within our core markets, though at a notably slower rate as we reach our target brand marketing investment levels. Our strategy is transitioning from expansion into new markets toward the optimization of existing ones, marking a departure from the phase where mature regions subsidized our entries into new markets. By moderating brand spend growth while leveraging the cumulative impact of previous investments, we plan to prioritize delivering improved profitability in the years ahead.

         Hotel Search

         We continue to focus on evolving our core product to streamline the accommodation search experience for price-savvy travelers. Underpinned by a high-velocity testing culture that delivers tangible product enhancements and conversion gains - further driving marketing efficiency - our roadmap centers on advancing three core pillars: Search, Deals, and Book.

         In Search, we are scaling capabilities within AI Smart Search & Content to personalize results and simplify complex queries. By leveraging advanced machine learning and Large Language Models ("LLMs"), we deliver widely adopted features - such as AI Highlights and AI Review Summaries - that improve how users evaluate hotels. Furthermore, our natural language integration enables travelers to explore accommodation options in more intuitive ways.

         We are strengthening our Deals pillar by combining exclusive offers with functional enhancements like list sharing

         - a strategy that is driving rising revenue from logged-in members while fostering long-term user retention. Logged-in members represent users that have registered on our platform to access exclusive rates and personalized features. We believe this membership layer allows us to better understand user preferences through first-party data. Our strategy focuses on converting anonymous traffic into logged-in members with the objective of fostering recurring usage and driving engagement through a more personalized user interface.

         Finally, our Book pillar's main priority is to facilitate a seamless booking process. We are prioritizing the expansion of trivago "Book & Go" and the integration of it more deeply in our platforms. We believe this will help facilitate a smoother booking experience for our users.

         We will continue to invest in AI-powered features that are central to offering a superior hotel search experience. We aim to be a leader on price perception, offering great deals and making them easy for users to find.

         Partnerships

         By co-creating and innovating with our advertising partners, we focus on unlocking user value throughout our metasearch platform and remaining a relevant marketing channel for our advertisers that drives high quality traffic. We continue to prioritize our transaction-based CPA-model, which has exceeded expectations in 2025 and continues to gain market share. By shifting risk and optimization complexity away from bidding, the CPA-Model helps smaller partners compete more effectively in our marketplace. Additionally, trivago "Book & Go" (accelerated by our trivago DEALS integration) enables our partners to leverage our facilitated trivago-branded booking funnel, enhancing their conversion rates and competitiveness within our marketplace.

      7. Advertiser mix

         Customers that pay to advertise on trivago include:

         • OTAs, including large international players, as well as smaller, regional and local OTAs;

         • Hotel chains, including large multi-national hotel chains and smaller regional chains;

         • Individual hotels;

         • Providers of alternative accommodation, such as vacation rental or private apartments.

           We generate the large majority of our Referral Revenue from OTAs. Certain brands affiliated with our majority shareholder, Expedia Group, including brands Expedia, Hotels.com, Wotif and Vrbo, in the aggregate, accounted for 34% of our Referral Revenue before intersegment eliminations for the year ended December 31, 2025. Booking Holdings and its affiliated brands, including Booking.com, Agoda and priceline.com, accounted for 40% of our Referral Revenue before intersegment eliminations for the year ended December 31, 2025.

           Nearly all of our agreements with advertisers, including our agreements with our largest advertisers, may be terminated upon prior notice of thirty days or less by either party. For more information on risks related to the concentration of our revenue and our relationship with our largest advertisers, see 4.2. Risk factors.

      8. Competition

         We face competition for hotel and alternative accommodation advertisers' marketing spend and for users. Additionally, emerging technologies like AI powered chatbots - such as ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), Grok (xAI), Claude (Anthropic), and Perplexity - are redefining user engagement and advertising strategies within the travel industry, presenting new competitive challenges and opportunities.

         Competition for users

         We compete to attract users to our websites and apps to help them research and find hotels and other accommodation. Given our position at the top of the online search funnel, many companies we compete with are also our customers.

         Our principal competitors for users include:

         • Online metasearch and review websites, such as Google Hotel Ads, Kayak, Skyscanner, Check24 and TripAdvisor;

         • Search engines, such as Bing, Google, Naver and Yahoo!;

         • Independent hotels and hotel chains, such as Accor, Hilton and Marriott;

         • OTAs, such as Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline, Ctrip, TUI, trip.com and Brand Expedia; and

         • Alternative accommodation providers, such as Airbnb and Vrbo.

           Competition for advertisers

           We compete with other advertising channels for hotel and alternative accommodation advertisers' marketing spend. These include traditional offline media and online marketing channels. In terms of user traffic, we compete on the basis of the quality of referrals, CPC/CPA rates, and advertisers' implied return on investment.

           Our principal competitors for advertisers' marketing spend include:

         • Print media, such as local newspapers and magazines;

         • Other traditional media, such as TV and radio;

         • Search engines, such as Bing, Google, Naver and Yahoo!;

         • Online metasearch and review websites, such as Google Hotel Ads, Kayak, Skyscanner, Check24 and TripAdvisor;

         • Social networking services, such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram), X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok;

         • Websites offering display advertising;

         • Email marketing software and tools;

         • Connected TV (CTV) streaming services and online video channels, such as YouTube; and

         • Mobile app marketing

      9. Our employees and culture

         trivago's culture is a blend of trust, collaboration, inclusivity, continuous learning, and a data-driven, entrepreneurial spirit, all aimed at fostering a dynamic, entrepreneurial and fulfilling work environment. We believe that our entrepreneurial corporate culture is a key ingredient to our success. It has been designed to reflect the fast-moving technology space in which we operate, as well as our determination to remain pioneers in our field. The management board periodically reflects on the culture within the enterprise and considers whether any adjustments are desirable to support the Company's strategy and operating environment; based on this assessment, no material changes are currently considered necessary.

         Trust in one another is our baseline, encouraging open information flow, fostering teamwork, and shaping the trivago community. Building strong, meaningful relationships turns individual employees into powerful, cohesive teams that operate as entrepreneurs in their areas of responsibility. These strong connections are the driving force that empowers us to overcome challenges and achieve common goals together. We draw inspiration from every employee that makes up our all-inclusive team continuously striving for innovation and improvement for both our internal and external customers. Our open-minded approach to development allows us to quickly learn, adapt, and improve. Through trivago's many possibilities, we take ownership of our personal journeys, dedicating time and effort to our own improvement. We exchange and learn from each other, because it fuels our collective growth. Cultural fit is a key part of our recruiting process, as we seek to hire employees with a growth mindset, comfortable working in a flat organizational structure that rewards those who are energized and motivated to take proactive action and continuously seek to learn, take risks and innovate. trivago promotes its core values and expected standards of conduct through its internal policies, including its code of business conduct and ethics. The Company monitors adherence to these standards on an ongoing basis; any identified non-adherence is reported and diligently followed through to ensure appropriate resolution. Based on this, management considers its code of business conduct and ethics to be an effective component of the Company's governance and control framework.

      10. Seasonality

          We experience seasonal fluctuations in the demand for our services as a result of seasonal patterns in travel. For example, searches and consequently our revenue are generally the highest in the first three quarters as travelers plan and book their spring, summer and winter holiday travel. Our revenue typically decreases in the fourth quarter. Seasonal fluctuations affecting our revenue also affect the timing of our cash flows.

          We typically invoice once per month, with customary payment terms. Therefore, our cash flow varies seasonally with a slight delay to our revenue, and is significantly affected by the timing of our Advertising Spend. Changes in the relative revenue share of our offerings in countries and areas where seasonal travel patterns vary from those described above may influence the typical trend of our seasonal patterns in the future.

      11. Intellectual property

          Our intellectual property, including trademarks, is an important component of our business. We rely on confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions with suppliers to protect our proprietary technology and our brands. Based on recent technological developments, we amended our artist and agency agreements to ensure that we can secure all relevant rights for creative work when using artificial intelligence in relation to marketing materials. In addition, we enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants.

          We have registered domain names for websites that we use in our business, such as www.trivago.com, www.trivago.de and www.trivago.co.uk. Our registered trademarks include: trivago, "Hotel? trivago", "trivago Rating Index", Youzhan, and our trivago logo. These trademarks are registered in various jurisdictions.

      12. Government regulation

          trivago provides, receives and shares data and information with its users, advertisers and other online advertising providers and conducts consumer facing marketing activities that are subject to consumer protection laws in jurisdictions in which we operate, regulating unfair and deceptive practices. For example, the United States and the European Union, or EU (including at member state level), but also many other jurisdictions, are increasingly regulating commercial and other activities on the Internet, including the use of information retrieved from or transmitted over the Internet, the display, moderation and use of user-generated content, and are adopting new rules aimed at ensuring user privacy and information security as well as increasingly regulating online marketing, advertising and promotional activities and communications, including rules regarding disclosures in relation to the role of algorithms and price display messages in the display practices of platforms.

          There are also new or additional rules regarding the taxation of digital products and services, the quality of products and services as well as addressing liability for third-party activities. Moreover, the applicability to the Internet of existing laws addressing issues such as intellectual property ownership and infringement is uncertain and evolving.

          In particular, we are subject to an evolving set of data privacy laws. trivago is subject to the GDPR, which has been in effect since May 25, 2018 and which has recently led to the imposition of significant fines on various companies. Due to the global nature of our operations, trivago is subject to an ever changing and growing patchwork of privacy laws, including the UK GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act 2018, the Brazilian General Data Protection Law, the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, to name a few.

          In the US, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CCPA) among other US state privacy laws; impose certain privacy requirements and restrictions as well as provide rights for consumers. Other privacy laws will continue to come into force in other US states, rendering it almost impossible to adopt a single compliance approach for the US. Other substantial markets have adopted or are in the process of adopting data protection regulations. As a result, the data privacy regulatory landscape is becoming more and more fragmented, and such regulations and the implementation and enforcement thereof risk being inconsistent or conflicting.

          While we strive to monitor and comply with this complex and ever-changing set of laws, a failure or perceived or alleged failure to comply with data privacy requirements in one of the jurisdictions where we operate, or target

          users may significantly harm our businesses. In addition, we could be adversely affected if data privacy regulations are expanded (through new regulation or through legal rulings) to require major changes in our business practices.

          The growing complexity of the data protection landscape is exemplified by the regulation regarding international transfer of personal data, which is rapidly evolving and likely to remain uncertain for the foreseeable future. In particular, the GDPR regulates transfers of EU personal data to third countries that have not been found by the European Commission to provide adequate protection to such EU personal data, such as the United States. A considerable number of our service providers and hotels operate in such jurisdictions. In July 2023, the European Commission adopted an adequacy decision for the Data Privacy Framework (DPF) which has been negotiated between the US and the European Union. This DPF provides companies with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the EU to the United States. While this new framework might help reduce the complexity surrounding the transfer of personal data from the EU to the US, uncertainty remains as to the long-term validity of this DPF (it is already subject, and might continue on being subject to, legal challenges). At present, companies still mostly rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses to transfer personal data from Europe to the United States and other countries that have not been found to provide adequate protection to EU personal data. However, reliance on the Standard Contractual Clauses is subject to enhanced due diligence on the data importer's national laws: a transfer impact assessment must be carried out for any transfers and supplementary measures may have to accompany the Standard Contractual Clauses for a transfer to be compliant. These changes are causing us to continually review our current compliance approach and may result in additional compliance costs. The legal uncertainty related to cross-border transfers of personal data, could harm our ability to transfer personal data outside of the EU, and could in turn harm our ability to provide, and our customers' ability to use, some of our services.

          Many governmental authorities in the markets in which we operate, especially in the EU, are also considering, or are in the process of implementing, additional and potentially diverging legislative and regulatory proposals that would or will increase the level and complexity of regulation of technology companies. For example, the EU's Digital Services Act, which fully entered into force on February 17, 2024, applies to trivago and, inter alia, imposes further disclosure obligations on us. The interpretation of this new regulation, which remains unclear for some of its provisions, is still subject to the upcoming publication of guidelines by the European Commission - the issuance of which could lead us to reassess our compliance approach on short notice. On July 14, 2025, the European Commission published Guidelines on the protection of minors under the DSA. However, the Commission may still issue additional guidelines, which could require further adjustments to our compliance strategy. Moreover, the European Commission adopted an Implementing Regulation setting out the rules and templates for transparency reporting by providers of intermediary services under the DSA. Providers were required to start collecting data under this regulation as of July 1, 2025, with the first harmonized reports due in early 2026. The EU has also adopted, or is in the process of adopting, a broad range of new legal instruments aimed primarily at regulating the technology sector (for example, the EU's Data Governance Act, the EU's Digital Markets Act, the EU's Data Act, the new EU's Network and Information Security Directive ("NIS 2"), the ePrivacy Regulation and the Digital Fairness Act).

          The emergence of increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence ("AI") models in recent years has prompted lawmakers around the world to consider or adopt AI-related regulations. For example, in February 2024, representatives of European Union Member States reached agreement on the proposed text of the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act, one of the first comprehensive regulations on AI. The AI Act entered into force on August 1, 2024, with full implementation scheduled by August 2, 2027. Enforcement will commence on August 2, 2026. The regulation remains subject to further guidance from the European Commission, with additional guidelines expected to be developed in the course of 2026. Other substantial markets, like the US and the UK, are also in the process of considering AI-specific legislation.

          The Digital Omnibus package, initially proposed by the European Commission on November 19, 2025, to simplify EU digital rules, is currently undergoing the ordinary legislative procedure within the European Parliament and the Council. The initiative seeks to help businesses innovate, scale, and save on administrative costs by streamlining several of the EU's core digital laws. Rather than introducing new regulations, the package aligns and adjusts existing frameworks to ensure they work together more coherently. This includes, among other things, legislative amendments to the AI Act as well as updates to the GDPR, Data Act, ePrivacy Directive, and cybersecurity rules.

          The legal landscape surrounding AI therefore remains uncertain and will require close monitoring in the coming years, as trivago increasingly applies AI technologies. For more details, see 4.2 Risk Factors.

          It is impossible to predict whether further new taxes or regulations will be imposed on our services and whether or how we might be affected. Increased regulation of the Internet could increase the cost of doing business or otherwise materially adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, the application and interpretation of existing laws and regulations to our business is often uncertain, given the highly dynamic nature of our business and the sector in which trivago operates. In addition, we are subject to evolving environmental, social and governance (ESG)-related regulatory requirements; see section 2.4.15 for further details.

      13. Technology and infrastructure Data and proprietary algorithms

          We process a large amount of information about user traffic and behavior, advertisers and direct connections into the databases of many of our advertisers. We believe it is central to the success of our business that we effectively capture and parse this data. To achieve this, we have developed proprietary algorithms that drive key actions across our platform, including search, listings and bidding tools. We continue to explore new ways to capture relevant data and feed this into our platform to further enhance the experience for both our users and advertisers. We also use AI-enabled tools and models in certain user-facing product features, including to generate hotel highlights and to power AI-enabled search functionality on our website.

          Infrastructure

          Our primary data center is situated in Germany, and we additionally utilize cloud servers located in the E.U., U.S., and Singapore, which we believe offer us secure and scalable storage and processing power at manageable incremental expense. While much of the data we receive and capture is not sensitive, our data centers and our cloud providers strive to be compliant with the highest security standards. Where required, our data centers and cloud providers are payment card industry (PCI) compliant and accordingly, it is our policy to store separately the limited amount of relevant sensitive data that we do capture. We have designed our websites, apps and infrastructure to be able to support high-volume demand.

          Software

          We develop our own software employing a rigorous iterative approach. This includes the proprietary algorithm underlying our search function, internal management tools, data analytics and advertiser tools.

      14. Legal proceedings

          From time to time, we may be involved in various claims and legal proceedings arising out of our operations.

          A number of regulatory authorities in Europe, Australia, and elsewhere have initiated litigation and/or market studies, inquiries or investigations relating to online marketplaces and how information is presented to consumers using those marketplaces, including practices such as search results rankings and algorithms, discount claims, disclosure of charges and availability and similar messaging. We paid a substantial penalty in 2022 related to a judgment in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) case against us regarding our advertising website display practices in Australia, however no further penalties have been incurred in recent years, and no similar judgments have been issued against us.

          In addition, a class action has been filed in Israel, making allegations about our advertising and/or display practices, such as search result rankings and algorithms, and discount claims. Pursuant to the court's recommendation, the parties have initiated mediation procedures to evaluate possibilities for an amicable resolution of the matter in December 2024. In 2025, the parties ceased the mediation procedures and continued the court proceedings with the next hearing being scheduled in the second quarter of 2026.

          Furthermore, the Company has received demand letters and arbitration demands from claimants alleging violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act related to the Company's use of certain website technologies. On March 18, 2026, an initial group of arbitration demands was filed with the American Arbitration Association, and additional threatened claims have been asserted but not filed. The Company believes it has substantial defenses, including challenges to the enforceability of arbitration for certain claimants and consent-related

          defenses for others. The proceedings are in early stages, and no determinations have been made regarding whether the claims are subject to arbitration or the merits of the underlying allegations.

          On May 5, 2026, we filed an antitrust damages claim against Google before the Regional Court of Hamburg, Germany. The claim seeks damages for losses suffered by trivago as a result of Google's alleged anticompetitive self-preferencing practices in the hotel metasearch market. The outcome of the litigation is inherently uncertain, and there can be no assurance as to the timing, outcome, or ultimate recovery of proceeds, if any, from these proceedings. Any potential recovery of proceeds is a gain contingency. Accordingly, no amounts have been recognized as of the date of this report, and none will be recognized until realized or realizable.

      15. Corporate social responsibility and sustainability

          trivago acknowledges the importance of corporate social responsibility and aims to conduct its business in the most sustainable manner. In 2025, we continued to focus on creating and maintaining an inclusive workplace. A designated position within our human relations function coordinates our efforts. Furthermore, our company supports local education by providing tech-focused workshops to the community, leveraging our team's skills to enhance local tech knowledge. We also make donations to support these efforts. We are working on setting up a partnership with a major NGO to help provide emergency support on a regular basis. We are enthusiastic about the ongoing development of our community engagement efforts and look forward to making a more significant impact through these initiatives.

          A core component of our company mission - to be your companion to experience our world - is ensuring there is always a world worth experiencing. Running our own operations sustainably is an important part of our strategy. Our headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany, where the great majority of our employees are located, has received a LEED gold certificate, indicating that it meets certain criteria that address carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation, materials, health and indoor environmental quality. In addition, our data centers have largely migrated to the cloud. Our primary cloud provider matches its annual electricity consumption with purchases of renewable energy. We may become subject to further sustainability related reporting requirements in the future. Directive (EU) 2022/2464 of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 14, 2022, amending Regulation (EU) No 537/2014, Directive 2004/109/EC, Directive 2006/43/EC and Directive 2013/34/EU, as regards corporate sustainability reporting (the "CSRD"), entered into force on January 5, 2023. The CSRD has been designed to strengthen disclosure rules regarding social and environmental information and seeks to provide investors and other stakeholders with access to the information they need to assess investment risks arising from climate change and other sustainability topics, including by requiring an audit of sustainability information reported. As a result of the Omnibus Directive (Directive (EU) 2026/470), the scope of the CSRD has been narrowed, and we are not currently required to report on sustainability matters thereunder. National implementation is still pending, and exact timelines are still unsure. We cannot, however, exclude that we will become subject to mandatory reporting obligations in the future, whether as a result of further regulatory developments at EU, national or international level, or changes in our size or activities. For example, certain U.S. jurisdictions, including California, have adopted climate-related disclosure requirements that may become applicable to us in future reporting periods.

3. Financial Overview

   1. Selected financial data

      The selected consolidated financial data for each of the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024 have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements and notes thereto set forth in section 9 of this annual report. The selected consolidated financial data for the year ended December 31, 2023 has been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements and notes thereto set forth in the annual report for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024.

      The following selected consolidated financial data should be read in conjunction with section 3.2. Management's discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations and our consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this annual report. Our consolidated financial statements included herein are prepared in accordance with EU IFRS and with Part 9 of Book 2 of the DCC.

      2025	2024	2023
      €000	€000	€000
      Consolidated statement of profit and loss
      Revenue from contracts with customers 551,334	460,849	485,031
      % of revenue growth 20 %	(5) %	(9) %
      Gross profit 535,385	449,600	473,148
      as a % of sales 97 %	98 %	98 %
      Profit/(loss) for the year 8,790	(4,119)	28,536
      Earnings per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders:
      Basic € 0.02 €	(0.01)	€ 0.08
      Diluted € 0.02 €	(0.01)	€ 0.08
      Dividends per share -	-	€ 0.529228
      Consolidated statement of financial position
      Cash and cash equivalents 131,013	133,745	101,847
      Total assets 316,159	262,033	256,452
      Total current liabilities 90,885	50,281	45,531
      Total equity 182,281	169,523	165,978
      Consolidated statement of cash flows
      Net cash provided by operating activities 3,860	20,764	26,882
      Net cash provided by/(used in) investing activities (307)	15,791	21,559
      Net cash used in financing activities (5,475)	(4,859)	(194,900)
      3.2. Management's discussion and analysis of financial	condition	and results of
      operations
      How we earn and monitor revenue

      We earn substantially all of our revenue when users of our websites and apps click on hotel offers or advertisements in our search results and are referred to one of our advertisers, or when a user makes a booking on the advertiser's website ultimately from a referral from our platform. We call this our Referral Revenue. Under our CPC model, each advertiser determines the amount that it wants to pay for each referral by bidding for advertisements on our marketplace. We also offer the option for our advertisers to participate in our marketplace on a cost-per-acquisition, or CPA, basis. We continue to onboard additional advertisers to the CPA model. See section 2.4.5. Marketplace.

      We also earn revenue by providing travelers with online platforms for direct hotel booking services and offering our advertisers business-to-business (B2B) solutions including subscription fees for trivago Business Studio, which provides hotels with advanced data analytics and tools to enhance the accuracy, visibility, and performance of their listings on trivago. Additionally, we have agreements with certain hotel service providers and affiliates to receive consideration based on achievement of sales volume targets or gross transaction volume of affiliate services, respectively. These revenue streams, which include existing other revenue streams and revenue streams resulting from the acquisition of trivago DEALS, do not represent a significant portion of our total revenue.

      Revenue is monitored by reviewing developments in the number of referrals, the Revenue per Referral, or RPR, and our key metric Return on Advertising Spend, or ROAS.

      Referrals

      We use the term "referral" to describe each time a visitor to one of our websites or apps clicks on a hotel offer in our search results and is referred to one of our advertisers. We charge our advertisers for each referral mostly on a CPC basis.

      We believe the primary factors that drive changes in our referral levels are the number of visits to our websites and apps (referred to as traffic volume(s)), the number of available accommodations on our search platform, content (the quality and availability of general information, reviews and pictures about the hotels), hotel room prices (the price of accommodation as well as the number of price sources for each accommodation), hotel ratings, the user friendliness of our websites and apps and the degree of customization of our search results for each visitor. Our referral levels are also heavily impacted by changes in our investment in Advertising Spend, as we rely on brand and performance marketing to attract users to our platform. In addition to continuously seeking expansion of our hotel and alternative accommodations advertisers network, we partner with such hotels or service providers to improve content and constantly test and improve the features of our websites and apps to improve the user experience, including our interface, user friendliness, and personalization for each visitor.

      Revenue per Referral

      We use Revenue per Referral, or RPR, to measure how effectively we convert referrals to revenue. RPR is calculated as Referral Revenue divided by the total number of referrals in a given period.

      RPR is determined by the CPC or CPA bids our advertisers submit on our marketplace. CPC bids submitted by our advertisers (or a CPC bid-equivalent in the case of advertisers billed on a CPA basis) play an important role in determining the prominence given to offers and their placement in our search results. We offer to our advertisers the ability to submit bids to participate in our marketplace. Bids are submitted based on a first-price basis or on a second-price auction model depending on the product offering.

      Advertisers can analyze the number of referrals obtained from their advertisements on our marketplace and the consequent value generated from a referral based on the booking value they receive from users referred from our site to determine the amount they are willing to bid. We refer to this percentage of booking value we earn in Referral Revenue as revenue share or as our monetization. The bidding dynamics of our advertisers on our platform affects the level of monetization. Accordingly, the bidding behavior of our advertisers is also influenced by the rate at which our referrals result in bookings on their websites, or booking conversion, and the amount our advertisers obtain from referrals as a result of hotels and other accommodation booked on their sites, or booking value. The quality of the traffic we generate for our advertisers increases when aggregate booking conversion and/or aggregate booking value increases. We estimate overall booking conversion and booking value from data voluntarily provided to us by certain advertisers to better understand the drivers in our marketplace and, in particular, to gain insight into how our advertisers manage their advertising campaigns. The information underlying our analysis is subject to uncertainties, which may include the quality of the data received from advertisers and the number of advertisers voluntarily providing this data to us at a given time. Booking value is influenced by factors such as average daily rates of accommodation prices and duration, referred to as length of stay. Foreign exchange developments against our reporting currency (the euro) also play a role in revenue developments.

      Assuming unchanged dynamics in the market beyond our marketplace, we would expect that the higher the potential booking value or booking conversion generated by a referral and the more competitive the bidding, the more an advertiser is willing to bid for a hotel advertisement on our marketplace, and therefore resulting in higher levels of monetization. The dynamics in the market beyond our marketplace are not static, and we believe that our advertisers continuously review their Advertising Spend on our platform and on other advertising channels, and continuously seek to optimize their allocation of their spending among us and our competitors.

      The following tables set forth the percentage changes year-over-year of RPR and the number of referrals for our trivago Core segments (for further description of the trivago Core segments, refer to "Note 3 - Segment information" in the notes to the consolidated financial statements included in this annual report) for the years indicated. Percentages calculated below are based on the unrounded amounts and therefore may not recalculate on a rounded basis.

      Year ended December 31,

      % increase in RPR 2025 vs 2024

      Americas 9 %

Developed Europe 7 %

Rest of World 13 %

Total 8 %

Year ended December 31,

% increase in number of referrals 2025 vs 2024

Americas 6 %

Developed Europe 8 %

Rest of World 10 %

Total 8 %

Revenue

Our total revenue in the year ended December 31, 2025 consisted of Referral Revenue of €532.9 million and other revenue of €18.4 million.

The breakdown of Referral Revenue by trivago Core segment is as follows:

Year ended December 31, % Change

(in millions)	2025	2024	2025 vs 2024
Americas	€ 199.8	€ 173.6	15 %
Developed Europe	220.7	192.1	15 %
Rest of World	112.5	90.5	24 %
Total	€ 532.9	€ 456.2	17 %

Referral Revenue increased €76.7 million, or 17%, compared to the same period in 2024. The increases in all trivago Core segments were primarily driven by growth from branded channel traffic in response to our continuous brand marketing investments, as well as growth from other marketing channels driven by improved booking conversion and higher traffic volumes. We continue to observe overall healthy bidding dynamics on our platform compared to the year ended December 31, 2024, particularly in Americas. These increases were partly offset by the weakening of local currencies against the Euro.

Other revenue increased by €13.8 million, compared to the same period in 2024, primarily driven by revenues resulting from providing online hotel booking services through the acquisition of trivago DEALS in the third quarter of 2025. It was partly offset by the discontinuation of other B2B revenue sources in the middle of 2024.

Advertising Spend

Advertising Spend is included in selling and marketing expense and consists of fees that we pay for our various marketing channels like TV, search engine marketing, display and affiliate marketing, email marketing, online video, app marketing, content marketing, and sponsorship and endorsement for our trivago Core segments. Other expenses not related to trivago Core segments' Advertising Spend are discussed in the "Selling and distribution" section below.

Advertising Spend by trivago Core segment is as follows:

	Year ended December 31,		% Change
(in millions)	2025 2024		2025 vs 2024
Americas	€ 165.8	€ 136.4	22 %
Developed Europe	159.5	136.3	17 %
Rest of World	92.9	72.7	28 %
Total	€ 418.2	€ 345.4	21 %

Total Advertising Spend increased by €72.8 million, or 21%, for the year ended December 31, 2025, compared to the same period in 2024. The increase was primarily driven by higher brand marketing investments across all trivago Core segments aimed at increasing the volume of direct traffic to our platforms.

Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)

Our chief operating decision makers ("CODMs") manage our business and evaluate operating performance for our trivago Core segments using our primary metrics, Return of Advertising Spend (ROAS) Contribution and ROAS expressed as a percentage. Both metrics use Referral Revenue before intersegment eliminations from our trivago DEALS operating segment as a basis for the calculation, in line with how our CODMs manage the

business. ROAS Contribution is the difference between Referral Revenue before intersegment eliminations and Advertising Spend. See "Note 3 - Segment Information" in the notes to the consolidated financial statements included in this annual report for further details. ROAS expressed as a percentage is the ratio of our Referral Revenue before intersegment eliminations to our Advertising Spend. We believe that both are indicators of the effectiveness of our advertising.

Our ROAS Contribution and ROAS by trivago Core segment are as follows:

Year ended December 31,

ROAS Contribution ROAS

	2025	2024	Δ €	2025	2024	Δ ppts
Americas € 36.7		€ 37.2	€ (0.5)	122.2%	127.3%	(5.1) ppts
Developed Europe	62.2	55.8	6.4	139.0%	140.9%	(1.9) ppts
Rest of World	19.7	17.8	1.9	121.2%	124.5%	(3.3) ppts
Global	€ 118.6	€ 110.8	€ 7.8	128.4%	132.1%	(3.7) ppts

Global ROAS decreased to 128.4% for the year ended December 31, 2025, compared to 132.1% in the same period in 2024, primarily due to continuous increases in brand marketing investments across all trivago Core segments with the intention of increasing the volume of direct traffic to our platforms in the long term. This was partly offset by improved performance marketing efficiency across all trivago Core segments.

Marketplace dynamics

Our advertisers regularly adjust the CPC and CPA bids they submit on our marketplace to reflect the levels of referrals, customers, bookings or revenue and profit they intend to achieve with their marketing spend on our platform. We have observed a number of factors that can influence an advertisers bidding behavior on our marketplace, including:

• The fees advertisers are willing to pay based on how they manage their advertising costs and their targeted return on investment;

• The availability of bidding models and/or tools made available to advertisers;

• Our advertisers' testing of their bidding strategies and the extent to which they make their inventories available on our marketplace;

• Responses of advertisers to elevated levels of volatility on our marketplace;

• Advertiser competition for the placement of their offers; and

• Our advertisers' response to changes made to our marketplace and product offerings such as the introduction of our second-price auction model or introduction of cost-per-acquisition.

Recent and ongoing trends in our business

The following recent and ongoing trends have contributed to the results of our consolidated operations, and we anticipate that they will continue to impact our future results.

Sustained, Strong Growth

We ended the year of 2025 with year-over-year total revenue growth of 20% and achieving double-digit year-over-year Referral Revenue growth of 17%. Our continuous brand marketing investments resulted in growth in branded channel traffic across all trivago Core segments. We also observed growth from other marketing channels driven by improved booking conversion and higher traffic volumes. The continued revenue growth observed over the year confirms our brand strategy is working as effectively as planned. We anticipate to continue our year-over-year total revenue growth in 2026 as well as improved profitability year-over-year.

Brand Marketing Increased Momentum

Accelerated investment in our brand continued to yield positive returns in 2025, as Referral Revenue increased at robust double-digit rates (year-over-year) across all trivago Core segments. In line with our strategic objective to strengthen our brand, we reinvested and significantly expanded brand investments and our portfolio across all

trivago Core segments during the year. Our brand marketing team has run campaigns in 30 countries and has delivered success across all trivago Core segments in 2025, strengthening both awareness of and consumer preference for trivago. Our AI-powered summer campaign featuring global icon and soccer coach Jürgen Klopp has proven very effective, and our winter campaign started with promising results. We aim to consistently improve marketing efficiency and have expanded into additional branded marketing channels which we anticipate to have further scaling potential going forward and which are expected to mitigate risk through marketing channel diversification.

On Track for Higher Profitability

We are encouraged by the delivery of 2025 net profit that exceeded our initial expectations heading into 2025. The increased brand marketing investment in 2025 had an impact on our ROAS in the short-term but we expect will have compounding positive effects in the long term. We expect to benefit from these compounding effects and to moderate the pace of our brand marketing investments in 2026 as compared to 2025. Additionally, we believe continued product improvements, an increasing number of logged-in members, and a seamless "Book & Go" user experience will further increase booking conversion and create retention. We expect that these initiatives, combined with strict cost discipline, will further drive our profitability in 2026.

Employees

We do not plan to increase our headcount materially during the year ending December 31, 2026.

Investments

In 2026, we plan to continue to make investments, for example, in self-developed software.

Advertiser structure

We continue to generate most of our Referral Revenue from a limited number of OTAs. Certain brands affiliated as of the date hereof with our majority shareholder, Expedia Group, including brands Expedia, Hotels.com, Wotif, and Vrbo, in the aggregate, accounted for 34% of our Referral Revenue before intersegment eliminations for the year ended 2025, compared to 37% for the year ended 2024. Booking Holdings and its affiliated brands, Booking.com, Agoda and priceline.com accounted for 40% of our Referral Revenue before intersegment eliminations for the year ended 2025, compared to 39% for the year ended 2024. Although we believe we will ultimately receive a portion of the additional booking value we generate for our advertisers, the fact that a significant portion of our Referral Revenue is generated from brands affiliated with Expedia Group and Booking Holdings can permit them to obtain the same or increased levels of referrals, customers, bookings or revenue and profit at lower cost.

Expenses Cost of revenue

Our cost of revenue consists primarily of our third-party cloud-related service provider expenses and third-party data center expenses, depreciation expense for self-owned data center, core personnel-related expenses and share-based compensation for our infrastructure operations staff and our customer service team. It also includes personnel-related expenses, transaction processing and verification costs and third-party customer support-related costs resulting from our acquisition of trivago DEALS.

Cost of revenue was €15.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, and increased by €4.7 million, or 42%, compared to the same period in 2024. The increase was primarily due to transaction processing and verification costs and customer support-related costs resulting from our acquisition of trivago DEALS. This was partly offset by a decrease in certain IT service provider costs that are closely related to revenue generation.

Selling and distribution

Selling and distribution expense includes advertising expense, other selling and marketing expenses, and share-based compensation expense.

Advertising expense consists of fees that we pay for our various marketing channels like TV, search engine marketing, display and affiliate marketing, email marketing, online video, app marketing, content marketing, and sponsorship and endorsement.

Other selling and marketing expenses include personnel-related expenses for our marketing, sales and account management teams, as well as production costs for our TV spots and other marketing material, and other professional fees such as market research costs.

Year ended December 31, % Change

(in millions)	2025	2024	2025 vs 2024
Advertising expense	€ 418.2	€ 345.4	21%
Other selling and marketing	27.1	21.7	25%
Share-based compensation	0.7	0.9	(26)%
Total selling and distribution expense	€ 446.0	€ 368.0	21%

Selling and distribution expense for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by €77.9 million, or 21%, compared to the same period in 2024, primarily driven by the increase in Advertising Spend in all trivago Core segments. See Advertising Spend above for further details.

Other selling and marketing expenses excluding share-based compensation for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by €5.4 million compared to the same period in 2024. The increase was driven by traffic acquisition costs and third-party customer service-related expenses resulting from our acquisition of trivago DEALS, increased costs to market our platform to new hoteliers, higher television advertisement production costs incurred in the second quarter in conjunction with our brand advertising campaigns, higher personnel costs, and higher digital services taxes. These were partly offset by the non-recurrence of the recognition of retroactive Canadian digital services taxes in 2024, as well as lower marketing expenses due to the end of our long-term sponsorship agreement in June 2024. Personnel costs increased primarily from higher headcount combined with a higher compensation base due to our annual salary review process in the trivago Core segments, and additional compensation expense from the trivago DEALS acquisition.

Share-based compensation expense decreased by €0.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2025, mainly in connection with fewer restricted stock units issued for marketing services received.

Technology and content

Technology and content expense consists primarily of expenses for technology development, product development and hotel search personnel and overhead, depreciation and amortization of technology assets including hardware, purchased and internally developed software and other professional fees (primarily licensing and maintenance expense), including share-based compensation expense. It also includes personnel-related expenses and IT-related third party service provider costs resulting from the trivago DEALS acquisition.

Year ended December 31, % Change

(in millions)	2025	2024	2025 vs 2024
Personnel	€ 29.8	€ 27.4	9%
Share-based compensation	1.0	1.1	(11)%
Depreciation of technology assets	7.6	4.9	55%
Professional fees and other	14.8	15.5	(4)%
Total technology and content	€ 53.2	€ 48.9	9%

Technology and content expense for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by €4.3 million, or 9%, compared to the same period in 2024.

Personnel-related costs for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by €2.4 million, or 9%, mainly due to higher compensation expense in the trivago Core segments resulting mostly from higher headcount combined with a higher compensation base due to our annual salary review process, and additional compensation from the trivago DEALS acquisition. These were partly offset by higher capitalization of developers' salaries.

Depreciation expense for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by €2.7 million, or 55%, mainly as a result of depreciation of technology assets resulting from the acquisition of trivago DEALS and due to the non-recurrence of the tax credits received in the fourth quarter of 2024 (see Note 1.3 Summary of material accounting policies - Government Grants).

Professional fees and other expenses for the year ended December 31, 2025 decreased by €0.7 million, or 4%, mainly due to lower cloud and IT-related service provider costs for the trivago Core segments that were not closely related to revenue generation, including a one-time fee paid in 2024 related to a contract amendment, partly offset by additional IT-related service provider costs resulting from the trivago DEALS acquisition, and headcount-based allocated office repair costs incurred in the first quarter of 2025.

General and administrative

General and administrative expense consists primarily of personnel-related costs including those of our executive leadership, finance, legal and human resource functions, as well as professional fees for external services including legal, tax and accounting. It also includes other overhead costs, depreciation and share-based compensation, as well as personnel-related expenses and further professional fees resulting from the trivago DEALS acquisition

Year ended December 31, % Change

(in millions)	2025	2024	2025 vs 2024
Personnel	€ 14.9	€ 13.3	12%
Share-based compensation	5.0	7.4	(32)%
Professional fees and other	12.4	13.4	(7)%
Total general and administrative	€ 32.3	€ 34.1	(5)%

General and administrative expense for the year ended December 31, 2025 decreased by €1.8 million, or 5%, compared to the same period in 2024.

Share-based compensation decreased by €2.4 million, or 32%, for the year ended December 31, 2025, which was mainly driven by fewer awards granted in 2025.

Personnel-related costs for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by €1.6 million, or 12%, primarily driven by higher executive leadership compensation expense and additional compensation expense from the trivago DEALS acquisition.

Professional fees and other expenses decreased by €1.0 million, or 7%, mainly due to lower legal expenses and lower consulting costs related to changes in the executive leadership. These were partly offset by higher costs related to the acquisition of the remaining equity interest in trivago DEALS in the third quarter of 2025.

Other operating income

Other operating income for the year ended December 31, 2025 was €6.6 million compared to €3.9 million in the same period in 2024. The increase was primarily driven by the €3.2 million gain from revaluing our previous equity interest in trivago DEALS and derecognition of the share purchase option upon completing the acquisition in the third quarter of 2025. Additionally, an intangible asset acquired through the weekengo GmbH acquisition was sold in the third quarter of 2025 for a gain of €0.2 million.

Finance expense

Our finance expense was €1.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, which remained stable compared to the same period in 2024.

Share of loss of an associate

Our share of loss from associates was €2.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to €1.7 million in the same period in 2024. The higher loss is mainly attributable to losses by Holisto Ltd (later renamed to trivago DEALS Ltd) incurred before we acquired the remaining equity interests in July 2025. See "Note 2 -Holisto Investment and Acquisition" in the notes to our consolidated financial statements for further detail.

Expense/(benefit) for income taxes

Income tax benefit was €1.8 million in the twelve months ended December 31, 2025, compared to income tax expense of €3.3 million in the same period in 2024 resulting primarily from the completion of the audit of the tax returns for trivago N.V. from 2019 through 2022, and the elimination of the uncertain tax position for unrecognized tax benefits related to the deductibility of expenses. The impact of significant changes in uncertain tax positions resulted in an effective tax rate of (26.9%) % in 2025, compared to (381.4%) in the prior year.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

For the year ended December 31, 2025, total cash and cash equivalents decreased by €2.7 million to €131.0 million. The decrease in cash and cash equivalents was mainly driven by cash used in investing and financing activities, partly offset by cash provided from operating activities. Refer to further detail in sections below.

Our known material liquidity needs for periods beyond the next twelve months are described below in "Note 9 -Commitments and Contingencies". We believe that our cash from operations, together with our cash balance are sufficient to meet our ongoing capital expenditures, working capital requirements and other capital needs for at least the next twelve months.

The following table summarizes our cash flows for the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2025:

Year ended December 31,

(in millions)	2025	2024
Cash flows provided from operating activities	€ 3.9	€ 20.8
Cash flows used in investing activities	(0.3)	15.8
Cash flows used in financing activities	(5.5)	(4.9)

Net Cash Flows From Operating Activities

For the year ended December 31, 2025, net cash provided from operating activities was €3.9 million reflecting a decrease of €16.9 million, or 81%, compared to the same period in 2024. The decrease in operating cash flows was mainly driven by negative working capital changes in the current year. As further described in "Note 2 - Holisto Investment and Acquisition" in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included in this annual report, trivago gained control and consolidated the operating results of trivago DEALS in the current year which was previously accounted for as an equity method investment. As a result, the operating cash flow for the full year includes the effects of seasonal declines in advances from travelers from the trivago DEALS segment, which were not included in the comparative period. Additionally, an increase in accounts receivable that resulted from higher year-over-year fourth quarter revenue further caused operating cash flows to decline year-over-year.

Net Cash Flows From Investing Activities

For the year ended December 31, 2025, cash used in investing activities was €0.3 million, primarily driven by the net cash used in the acquisition of the remaining equity interest in trivago DEALS of €15.0 million in the third quarter of 2025, and capital expenditures, including property, plant, and equipment and intangible assets of €4.5 million. These were partly offset by proceeds from sales and maturities of short-term investments of €17.7 million.

Net Cash Flows Used in Financing Activities

For the year ended December 31, 2025, cash used in financing activities was €5.5 million, primarily driven by the repayment of the principal portion of lease liabilities of €2.8 million and payment of interest of €1.5 million, as well as payments totaling €1.2 million related to withholding taxes on net share settlements of equity awards.

Research and Development

We conduct research and development activities to continuously improve our product and are only capitalized if all the conditions stipulated in the applicable accounting standard are met.

Amortization related to capitalized research and development activities is included in technology and content within the consolidated statement of profit or loss. This amortization amounted to €3.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2025. For the year ended December 31, 2024, amortization amounted to €2.6 million, net of €0.6 million credit for the tax credits (See Note 1.3 Summary of material accounting policies - Government Grants). Expenses related to research activities were insignificant for the years ended and December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2024, respectively.

1. Risk Management and Risk Factors

   1. Risk management, risk appetite and control systems

      The management board and supervisory board are responsible for reviewing the Company's risk management and control systems in relation to the financial reporting by the Company. These risk management and control systems have been established to mitigate the risk the Company faces as described in section 4.2. Risk Factors. The supervisory board has charged its audit committee (the "Audit Committee") with the periodic oversight of these risk management and control systems, with reports being provided to the supervisory board. The Audit Committee assists the supervisory board in monitoring (i) the integrity of the Company's financial statements and its accounting and financial reporting processes, (ii) the effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting, (iii) the Company's compliance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements (including United States federal securities laws), (iv) the qualifications, independence and performance of the independent auditors, (v) the Company's internal audit function, (vi) the Company's processes and procedures relating to risk assessment and risk management, and (vii) related party transactions, and oversees the design and operation of the Company's internal risk management and control systems.

      Our success as a business depends on our ability to identify opportunities while assessing and maintaining an appropriate risk appetite. Our risk management considers a variety of risks, including those related to our industry and business, those related to our ongoing relationship with our shareholders; those related to our intellectual property and those related to the ownership of our Class A shares and American Depositary Shares ('ADS')s. Within each category of risk, we have included risk factors in section 4.2. Risk Factors that describe our current view of the significance of each risk described therein and have summarized those that we consider as key risks in the section 4.2 Summary of key risk factors. The summary of key risk factors may not include all risks that may affect the Company, and other risks included in section 4.2. Risk Factors as well as others not described in this report may have a material and adverse impact on our business, strategic objectives, revenues, income, assets, liquidity, capital resources and achievement of our strategic initiatives. Our approach to risk management is designed to provide reasonable, but not absolute, assurance that our assets are safeguarded, the risks facing the business are being assessed and mitigated and all information that may be required to be disclosed is reported to our senior management including, where appropriate, to our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Our risk appetite is also described in various chapters of this report, including in sections Recent and ongoing trends in our business and Liquidity and Capital Resources as well as Note 7 Financial risk management to the Consolidated Financial Statements (section 9).

      The management board and the supervisory board believe that the Company's internal risk management and control systems provide reasonable assurance that the Company's financial reporting does not contain any errors of material importance and that these risk management and control systems worked properly in the fiscal year to which this board report pertains. The management board and supervisory board have no reason to believe that there are material shortcomings associated with the Company's internal risk management and control systems. The risk management and control systems have not been materially revised during the fiscal year to which this board report pertains, and, other than as disclosed herein, no material improvements thereto are currently scheduled.

      The Company's internal risk management and control systems are under continuous review and have been discussed by the management board with the Audit Committee and the members of the supervisory board. The same applies to any material weaknesses that are identified. The assessment of the effectiveness of these systems is based on periodic management reviews, internal control procedures, reporting by the internal audit function, and discussions with the Audit Committee and supervisory board.

      Controls and procedures Disclosure controls and procedures

      We maintain disclosure controls and procedures, as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act. Our management, with the participation of our chief executive officer and chief financial officer, has evaluated the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures as of December 31, 2025. Based upon that evaluation, our chief executive officer and chief financial officer concluded

      that, as of December 31, 2025, the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures were effective to accomplish their objectives.

      Management's report on internal control and risk management over financial reporting, operational and compliance risks

      Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting, as defined in Rule 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) of the Exchange Act. Internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

      Management conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting based on the criteria for effective control over financial reporting described in Internal Control - Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission.

      On July 31, 2025, we completed the acquisition of trivago DEALS Ltd. and are currently integrating its internal controls and procedures into our overall internal control over financial reporting structure. Management's assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2025 excluded the internal controls of trivago DEALS Ltd., the operations of which are included in our consolidated financial statements. trivago DEALS Ltd. represented approximately 23% of our total consolidated assets (including goodwill and intangible assets) and 3% of our total consolidated revenues as of and for the year ended December 31, 2025.

      Based on this evaluation, management has concluded that, as of December 31, 2025, the Company's internal control over financial reporting was effective. Management has reviewed its assessment with the Audit Committee.

      Internal and risk management

      trivago has internal control and risk management systems that are suitable for the Company. trivago's internal control and risk management function operates under the responsibility of Management and is monitored on an ongoing basis. Management reviews the effectiveness of the design and operation of the internal control and risk management systems at least annually, and more frequently where required, as part of trivago's internal control procedures, including with respect to financial reporting, operational and compliance risks. The supervisory board oversees the internal control and risk management function and maintains regular contact with the persons fulfilling this function. In 2025, the findings of the control activities were reported to Management and the Audit Committee. The internal audit function, operating in accordance with its charter and reporting functionally to the Audit Committee, provides independent and objective assurance on the effectiveness of governance, risk management and control processes.

      Management recognizes the inherent limitations of internal control and risk management systems. These systems cannot provide absolute certainty that all risks have been identified or are effectively managed despite our continued efforts to improve our processes and procedures. The level of certainty is influenced by, among other things, (i) inherent limitations to risk management, (ii) business considerations such as trivago's risk appetite,

      (iii) the complexity of trivago's operations and (iv) the dynamic nature of our business environment. Certain risks remain outside of the Company's direct control as they depend on third parties or external circumstances beyond our influence.

      Management statement

      On the basis of what is described in the paragraph directly above and of periodic reports and information provided to our managing directors, coming from different processes, audits and controls, including the internal function and the Audit Committee (which periodically has separate executive sessions with management and the internal audit function discussing relevant topics) and the information it received from management, our management board is of the opinion that:

      • this report provides sufficient insight into failings in the effectiveness of the Company's risk management and control systems with regard to the risks associated with the strategy and activities of the Company and its affiliated enterprise (if any - none are identified in this report);

      • the Company's risk management and control systems provide reasonable assurance that the Company's financial reporting does not contain material inaccuracies;

      • the Company's internal risk management and control systems provide a level of comfort, taking into account their inherent limitations, that the operational and compliance risks as described in section 4.2 Risk Factors of this board report, are managed in line with the Company's risk appetite;

      • based on the Company's state of affairs as at the date of this report and sufficiency of our cash balance to meet the Company's material liquidity needs as described in the penultimate paragraph of the section 3.2 Liquidity and Capital Resources section of this board report, it is justified that the Company's financial reporting is prepared on a going concern basis; and

      • this report states the material risks associated with the strategy and activities of the Company and its affiliated enterprise and the uncertainties, to the extent that they are relevant to the expectation of the Company's continuity for a period of twelve months after the date of this report.

      Management does not expect that our disclosure controls and procedures or our internal control over financial reporting will prevent or detect all cases of error and fraud. Any control system, no matter how well designed and operated, is based upon certain assumptions and can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that its objectives will be met. Further, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within the Company have been detected.

      It should be noted that some risks by their nature cannot be effectively managed and as such the above does not imply that the internal risk management and control systems provide certainty as to the realization of strategic, operational, compliance and reporting objectives, nor can they prevent materialization of risks, misstatements, inaccuracies, errors, fraud or non-compliances with laws and regulations.

      The above statement on internal control should not be construed as a statement in response to the requirements of section 4040 of the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2022.

   2. Risk factors

Our business faces significant risks. You should carefully consider all of the information set forth in this board report and in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC, including the information set forth in our annual report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC on February 26, 2026, and the following risk factors which we face and that are faced by our industry. Our business, financial condition or results of operations could be materially adversely affected by any of these risks. This board report also contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our results could materially differ from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors including the risks described below and elsewhere in this report and our SEC filings. See 1.2. Special note regarding forward-looking statements" above.

Summary of key risk factors

Some of the key risks related to trivago and its business include the following. We urge shareholders to review all of chapter 4.2 for a complete understanding of applicable risk factors.

Risks related to the general economic and geopolitical environment, the travel industry and our business

• We are pursuing a strategy to increase brand marketing investments, with the aim of increasing the volume of direct traffic to our platform in the long-term. This strategy may not enable us to grow our revenue in future periods, or at rates deemed sufficient by the market without reducing our profits or incurring losses.

• We rely on search engines, particularly Google, to drive a substantial amount of traffic to our platform. Google continues to promote its own products and services that compete directly with our accommodation search at the expense of traditional keyword auctions and organic search. If we are unable to drive traffic cost-effectively, direct traffic to our platform could decline going forward, as it had been doing recently and our business would be negatively affected.

• If TV or other brand marketing advertising, including on social media and other digital platforms, becomes less effective or if we experience diminishing returns from investments in such advertising, overall or in key markets, our planned brand marketing campaigns may not be as successful in terms of Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) as our broad-reaching TV marketing campaigns had been prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The number of users we attract from search engines to our platform is due in large part to how and where information from, and links to, our websites are displayed on search engine pages. The display, including rankings, of search results can be affected by a number of factors, many of which are not in our control. Google and other search engine providers frequently update and change the logic that determines the placement and display of results of a user's search.

• We derive a very large portion of our revenue from a small number of advertisers. Any reduction in spending or any change in the bidding strategies by any of these advertisers could harm our business and negatively affect our financial condition and results of operations.

• We cannot reliably predict our advertisers' future CPC/CPA advertising spend or CPC bidding levels or other strategic goals they hope to achieve through changes in bidding on our marketplace and, as a result, it is difficult for us to forecast advertiser demand, especially since our advertisers can and often do change their CPC bidding levels with little or no notice to us.

• We are subject to a number of factors that contribute to significant period-to-period volatility in our financial condition and results of operations.

• We are dependent on general economic conditions, and declines in travel or discretionary spending could reduce the demand for our services.

• We have incurred losses due to impairment of intangible assets and may in the future record further impairments.

• Increasing competition in our industry could result in a loss of market share and higher traffic acquisition costs or reduce the value of our services to users and a loss of users, which would adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

• Any change in the global geopolitical environment, including any escalation or unexpected change in circumstances in the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, continued regional instability in the Middle East, leading to airspace restrictions and fuel cost increases with resulting impacts on travel demand and flight availability, potential changes in U.S. tariff policy and other countries' responses thereto, or other developments resulting in heightened cross-border controls may have a negative impact on our business.

• If we do not innovate, integrate or provide tools/services sufficiently useful to users and advertisers, we may not stay competitive, and our revenue and results of operations could suffer.

• Several of our product features depend, in part, on our relationship with third parties to provide us with content and services.

• Climate change may have an adverse impact on our business.

  Legal and regulatory risks

• We are involved in various legal proceedings, including our antitrust damages claim against Google, and may experience unfavorable outcomes, incur significant costs and uncertainties regarding timing and recovery, which could adversely affect our reputation, business and financial condition.

• Regulators' continued focus on the consumer-facing business practices of online travel companies, as well as related private litigation, may adversely affect our business, financial performance, results of operations or business growth.

• We process, store and use user and employee personal data, which entails reputational, litigation and liability risks associated to any actual or perceived potential failure to comply with relevant legal obligations and regulatory guidance, which are constantly evolving.

• Regulations and expectations relating to environmental, social, and governance ("ESG") considerations could expose us to potential liabilities, increased costs, and reputational harm.

  Operational risks

• The competition for highly skilled personnel, including C-level and other senior management and technology professionals is intense. If we are unable to retain or motivate key personnel or hire, retain, and motivate qualified personnel, especially as the broader job market undergoes structural changes that increase our costs, our business would be harmed.

• We are dependent upon the quality of traffic in our network to provide value to our advertisers, and any failure in our ability to deliver quality traffic and/or the metrics to demonstrate the value of the traffic could have a material and adverse impact on the value of our websites to our advertisers and adversely affect our revenue.

• We rely on assumptions, estimates and data to make decisions about our business, and any inaccuracies in, or misinterpretation of, such information could negatively impact our business.

• We may experience difficulties in implementing new business and financial systems.

• Increased computer circumvention capabilities could result in security breaches in our information systems, which may significantly harm our business.

• Any significant disruption in service on our websites and apps or in our computer systems, most of which are currently hosted by third-party providers, could damage our reputation and result in a loss of users, which would harm our business and results of operations.

• We rely on information technology to operate our business and maintain our competitiveness, and any failure to invest in and adapt to technological developments and industry trends could harm our business.

• Any use of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) technologies in our operations may present additional legal, regulatory, and social risks, which could lead to additional costs and impact our competitive position.

• Our brand is subject to reputational risks and impairment.

  Risks related to our ongoing relationship with our shareholders

• Expedia Group controls our company and has the ability to control the direction of our business.

• Expedia Group's interests may conflict with our interests and the interests of certain shareholders (including the Founders), and conflicts of interest between Expedia Group and us could be resolved in a manner unfavorable to us and our shareholders.

Risks related to the general economic and geopolitical environment, the travel industry and our business

We are pursuing a strategy to increase brand marketing investments, with the aim of increasing the volume of direct traffic to our platform in the long-term. This strategy may not enable us to grow our revenue in future periods, or at rates deemed sufficient by the market without reducing our profits or incurring losses.

We significantly reduced advertising on television (TV) in 2020 but again started investing in it late in 2023. We believe our prior television advertising campaigns had a significant positive effect, albeit one that diminished over time, on direct traffic volumes to our platform in periods after the advertising was aired. We have decided to increase our brand marketing investments again to increase the volume of direct traffic to our platform. Our continued increases in brand marketing investments are expected to negatively impact our profitability in the short-to-medium term and there can be no assurances that this revised strategy will succeed in the long term.

The success of our brand marketing investments depends on consumers' awareness of the trivago brand, perceived quality and perceived differentiated attributes of our brand, and to what extent those efforts help us attract and expand the number of users of our websites and apps. If TV or other brand marketing advertising, including on social media and other digital platforms, becomes less effective or if we experience diminishing returns from investments in such advertising, overall or in key markets, our planned brand marketing campaigns may not be as successful in terms of Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) as our broad-reaching TV marketing campaigns had been prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we make our planned investments, we may observe lower effectiveness due to increased spending from competitors or may see reduced benefits from our advertising due to, among other things, increasing traffic share growth of search engines as destination sites for users and the declining viewership in certain age groups and changes in viewing patterns, including the increased prominence of social media and short-form video platforms and influencer marketing as brand discovery channels, that reduce exposure to our traditional TV advertising and can introduce additional risks including those that are outside our control, such as changes to platform rules or algorithms that reduce the reach of our ads, ads appearing next to inappropriate content that could harm our brand, and difficulty measuring or attributing the results of our ads. As we develop new creative concepts in our advertisements, our new advertisements may not be as effective in terms of ROAS as those we have used in the past. In particular, social media advertising and influencer partnerships may deliver unpredictable or lower ROAS. Our competitors may also invest in innovative advertisement campaigns to improve their brand awareness, which could make it difficult for us to increase or maintain our own marginal returns on our advertisements, despite our planned investments in brand marketing.

We expect the continued decline in viewership on traditional linear television to persist as consumers shift to other digital formats, such as streaming platforms, social media and online video. As a result, we have begun investing in other channels with which we are becoming more familiar, including non-linear TV advertising formats and social media which may prove less effective than TV advertising in the long run and potentially lead to a lower marginal ROAS, and which expose us to additional risks, including dependence on third-party platforms, volatile auction dynamics, changes to algorithms and advertising policies, brand safety incidents, evolving privacy and data restrictions that impair our ability to target our advertisements and measure their performance, and higher content production costs. If we are unable to maintain or enhance consumer awareness of our brand or to generate additional revenue in a cost-effective manner, it may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

We rely on search engines, particularly Google, to drive a substantial amount of traffic to our platform. Google continues to promote its own products and services that compete directly with our accommodation search at the expense of traditional keyword auctions and organic search. If we are unable to drive traffic cost-effectively, direct traffic to our platform could decline going forward, as it had been doing recently and our business would be negatively affected.

We rely on Bing, Google, Yahoo! and other Internet search engines to generate a substantial amount of traffic to our websites, principally through the purchase of hotel-related keywords. We obtain a significant amount of traffic via search engines and therefore utilize techniques such as search engine optimization and search engine marketing to improve our placement in relevant search queries. The number of users we attract from search engines to our platform is due in large part to how and where information from, and links to, our websites are displayed on search engine pages. The display, including rankings, of search results can be affected by a number of factors, many of which are not in our control. Google and other search engine providers frequently update and