Hotel search trivago acquires AI platform tripl

Trivago today announces the acquisition of the assets of tripl (winner of ITB’s Start-Ups Battle 2016), a machine learning travel start-up from Hamburg. The acquisition will enhance trivago’s product with personalization technology which uses both Big Data and a customer-centric approach.

Founded in 2015, tripl has developed an algorithm to give tailored travel recommendations by identifying trends in users’ social media activities and comparing it with in-app data of like-minded users. The AI-driven product imitates the way a travel agent would recommend hotel experiences relevant to the customer, and combines it with the ease of online services.

Following the acquisition, the former CTO and creator of the tripl algorithm, Hendrik Kleinwächter, will join trivago’s development team to continue breaking new ground in personalization. “When visiting a restaurant, I prefer those with few hand-picked entries on the menu, that exactly match my taste. That is what I believe a modern travel website should look like. There are billions of combinations, but the user is really only interested in the most relevant ones – we offer them through our algorithm”, Kleinwächter said.

“We believe our competitive advantage is the speed of our learning. We have always focused on machine-learning, and the area of semantic analysis,” said Rolf Schrömgens, founder and CEO of trivago. “tripl’s personalization technology is unique and individual in its approach, putting us one step closer toward bringing each traveler into their ideal hotel.”