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(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)

(Translation of Registrant’s name into English)

(Jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)

(Address of principal executive offices)

(Name, Telephone, E-mail and/or Facsimile number and Address of Company Contact Person)

Securities registered or to be registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Securities for which there is a reporting obligation pursuant to Section 15(d) of the Act: None

Indicate the number of outstanding shares of each of the issuer’s classes of capital or common stock as of the close of the period covered by the annual report:

(as of December 31, 2023)

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.    ☐ Yes   ☒  No

If this report is an annual or transition report, indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.    ☐ Yes   ☒   No

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.

☒ Yes ☐ No Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).

☒   Yes   ☐ No

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a "large accelerated filer," an "accelerated filer," a "non-accelerated filer" or an "emerging growth company."

Large accelerated filer  ☐        Accelerated filer  ☒        Non-accelerated filer  ☐        Emerging growth company  ☐  

If an emerging growth company that prepares its financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards† provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.  ☐

† The term “new or revised financial accounting standard” refers to any update issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to its Accounting Standards Codification after April 5, 2012.

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report.     ☒  Yes   ☐ No

If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b).  ☐

Indicate by check mark which basis of accounting the registrant has used to prepare the financial statements included in this filing:

U.S. GAAP x

International Financial Reporting Standards as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board  o

Other o

        

If “Other” has been checked in response to the previous question, indicate by check mark which financial statement item the registrant has elected to follow: 

☐   Item 17   ☐  Item 18

If this is an annual report, indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).    ☐  Yes    ☒   No

As used herein, references to “we,” “us,” the “company,” or “trivago,” or similar terms in this Annual Report on Form 20-F 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.

Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or U.S. GAAP. 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.

This annual report contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, 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:

•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 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, or CPC, bidding 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 and inflation on consumer discretionary spending;

•any further impairment of intangible assets;

•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 war in Ukraine and the ongoing conflict affecting the Middle Eastern region;

•increasing competition in our industry;

•our ability to innovate 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; and

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

You should refer to the section of this annual report titled “Item 3: Key information - D. Risk factors” for a discussion of important 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 annual report and the documents that we reference in this annual report and have filed as exhibits to this annual 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.

Our business is subject to numerous risks that you should be aware of before making an investment decision. These risks are described more fully in "Item 3: Key information - D. Risk factors". These risks include, among others:

•We recently announced 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 continue to decline and our business would be negatively affected.

•If TV or other brand marketing advertising 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 engines 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 advertising spend or CPC 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.

•As a result of the change in the macroeconomic outlook, we have experienced and may in the future record impairments of intangible assets.

•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 or the ongoing conflict affecting the Middle Eastern region, may have a negative impact on our business.

•If we do not innovate and provide tools and services that are sufficiently useful to users and advertisers, we may not remain 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.

•We are involved in various legal proceedings and may experience unfavorable outcomes, which could adversely affect our reputation, business and financial condition.

•Regulators' continued focus on the consumer-facing business practices of online travel companies 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.

•The competition for highly skilled personnel, including 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.

•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, the interests of the Founders and the interests of our shareholders, and conflicts of interest among Expedia Group and us could be resolved in a manner unfavorable to us and our shareholders.

Not required.

We almost completely ceased advertising on television in 2020 and resumed such advertising at reduced levels in recent years. We believe our prior television advertising campaigns continued to have a significant positive effect, albeit one that diminishes over time, on direct traffic volumes to our platform in periods after the advertising was aired. As we continue to see diminishing returns from prior brand marketing campaigns, our financial performance has been negatively impacted. We have experienced declines in direct traffic volumes to our platform and a reduction in revenue of 9.3% in 2023, compared to 2022.

We have decided to increase our brand marketing investments to increase the volume of direct traffic to our platform. Our planned 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.

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 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 increasing prices in light of 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 that reduce viewer exposure to advertising. 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. 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 anticipate the decline in viewership on traditional linear television to persist as consumers shift to other digital formats, such as streaming platforms and online video. As a result, we have begun investing in other channels with which we have less experience, 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. 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 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 engines frequently update and change the logic that determines the placement and display of results of a user’s search. If a major search engine changes its algorithms in a manner that negatively affects the search engine ranking, paid or unpaid, of our websites or that of our third-party distribution partners, it may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects. For example, we observed ad format tests on Google that negatively impacted traffic volumes to our platform in 2023. In addition, increased competition in keyword auctions can also negatively impact our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects, For example, we observed higher levels of competition in keyword auctions that resulted in declines in traffic volumes in 2023, particularly in our Americas and Developed Europe segments.

In addition, certain search and metasearch companies may change their displays or rankings in order to promote their own competing products or services, or the products or services of one or more of our competitors. For example, Google, a significant source of traffic to our website, frequently promotes its own hotel search platform (which it refers to as “Google Hotel Ads”) at the expense of traditional keyword auctions and organic search results.

This presents a challenge since we have significantly less flexibility to acquire traffic for our website using that platform compared to traditional hotel-related keyword advertising. In addition, our major advertisers might not be amenable in some cases to our using their inventory to compete with them on Google Hotel Ads, which may present a further difficulty if Google continues to direct traffic in this manner. Google’s promotion of its own competing products, or similar actions by Google in the future that have the effect of reducing our prominence or ranking on its search results, could have a substantial negative effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our "cost-per-click," or CPC, pricing for click-based advertising depends, in part, on competition among advertisers on our marketplace, with advertisers that pay higher CPCs generally receiving better advertising placement and more referrals from us. We continue to generate the great majority of our revenue from our largest OTA advertisers, including brands affiliated with Booking Holdings, such as Booking.com, Agoda and priceline.com, and those affiliated with our majority shareholder, Expedia Group, such as Brand Expedia and Hotels.com. The loss of any of our major advertisers, on some or all of our platforms, or a further reduction in the amount they spend, or a further concentration in Advertising Spend by one advertiser could result in significant decreases in our revenue and profit or negative impacts on our liquidity position.

Our ability to grow and maintain revenue from our advertisers is dependent to a significant extent on our ability to generate referrals, customers, bookings or revenue and profit for our advertisers on a basis they deem to be cost-effective. Any reduction in the value that we deliver to our advertisers or our ability to match the value delivered by our competitors may negatively affect CPC bids on our marketplace. Our advertisers’ spend on our platforms may also be adversely affected by other factors such as a weakening of their own financial or business conditions or external economic effects.

Even if we improve our product and deliver value to our advertisers, the fact that a very significant portion of our revenue is generated from brands affiliated with Booking Holdings and Expedia Group can permit these advertisers, depending on marketplace dynamics, to adjust their CPC bids and obtain the same or increased levels of referrals, customers, bookings or revenue and profit at a lower cost. This can occur if one or more advertisers with sufficient market share to influence our aggregate CPC levels change their return-on-investment targets for their spend on our marketplace. Our advertisers may curtail their spend on our platform in response to changes we may make to our product offering or strategy, which may also, in turn, negatively impact our revenue levels and profitability or increase the volatility on our marketplace.

Our financial condition and results of operations have varied and may continue to vary considerably from period-to-period. This was reflected in the quarter-to-quarter changes in our profitability and revenue in 2023 and earlier years. We cannot reliably predict our advertisers' future advertising spend or CPC 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. Our advertisers often pursue different marketing strategies and have varying levels of competitiveness based on their own competitive position. We believe that our advertisers continuously review their advertising spend on our platform and on other marketing channels, and continuously seek to optimize the allocation of their spend among us and our competitors.

We regularly compete with our advertisers in auctions for search engine keywords on Google and other search engines and adjust our spend on search engine marketing based on trends we see in our results. Large advertisers' strategies regularly test how changes in their spend on our platform may affect the efficiency of their spend on these other marketing channels. If these tests indicate that there are financial benefits from spending less on our platform, we would generate fewer referrals to our advertisers' websites, and as a result, our revenues and results of operations would be adversely affected.

Furthermore, any resulting changes in Referral Revenue, especially as a result of changes in CPC bidding levels by our largest advertisers, could result in our inability to reduce our Advertising Spend, particularly on television, quickly enough to respond to the change in revenue since we have historically placed orders for television advertising in advance of the campaign season. As we spend the great majority of our revenue on advertising, such a failure to reduce Advertising Spend quickly enough can have, and has in the past had, a sudden and significant adverse effect on our profitability and results of operations. This risk may be exacerbated by our strategy to increase our brand marketing investments. Any resulting inability to meet financial guidance that we may communicate to the market in the future may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our results of operations and financial prospects are significantly dependent upon users of our services and the prosperity and solvency of the OTAs, hotel chains and independent hotels that have relationships with us. The global economic outlook continues to be highly uncertain, with an economic recession in some or all of our key markets still possible. Travel, including the booking of accommodation, is dependent on personal and business discretionary spending levels, which are directly affected by perceived or actual adverse economic conditions. Our results of operations and financial prospects continue to be significantly dependent upon the economic health of our users and the prosperity and solvency of the OTAs, hotel chains and independent hotels that have relationships with us.

We recorded a cumulative impairment charge of €196.1 million in 2023 in connection with our annual indefinite-lived intangible asset and goodwill impairment analysis, resulting in the elimination of the goodwill balance and a remaining intangible asset balance of €75.6 million on the consolidated balance sheet as of December 31, 2023. The impairment was driven by adjustments made to our profitability outlook arising from the announced strategy shift to long-term growth, share price decline during the third quarter of 2023, uncertainty in our operating environment, and the continued uncertainty in respect of the overall economic environment. We may record further impairment charges in the future due to further changes in the macroeconomic outlook.

We operate in an increasingly competitive travel industry. Many of our current and potential competitors, including hotels themselves (both hotel chains and independent hotels), and metasearch engines, such as Kayak, TripAdvisor, Skyscanner and Google Hotel Ads, locally focused metasearch engines, such as Check24, OTAs, such as Booking.com, Ctrip, TUI, trip.com and Brand Expedia, alternative accommodation websites, such as Airbnb and Vrbo, and other hotel websites, may have been in existence longer, may have larger user bases, may have wider ranges of products and services and may have greater brand recognition and customer loyalty in certain markets and/or significantly greater financial, marketing, personnel, technical and other resources than we do. Some of these competitors may be able to offer products and services on more favorable terms than we can. Google Hotel Ads and other metasearch websites, continue to expand globally, are increasingly competitive, have access to large numbers of users, and, in some cases, continue to adopt strategies and develop technologies and websites that are very similar to ours. In particular, Google has entered various aspects of the online travel market and has grown rapidly in this area, including by offering a flight meta-search product ("Google Flights"), a hotel meta-search product ("Google Hotel Ads"), a vacation rental meta-search product, a tours and activities product, an inspirational travel product, Google Travel (which is a planning tool that aggregates its flight, tours and activities and hotel and packages products in one website), and by integrating its hotel meta-search products and restaurant information and reservation products into its Google Maps app.

In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to disrupt the online travel industry, possibly changing how travelers look for and book travel. AI's advancement could enable our competitors to enhance user experiences and operational efficiencies, potentially threatening our position in the market if we do not adopt and deploy artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) as quickly or as efficiently as our competitors. Further, the rapid pace of AI/ML’s development may require the investment of significant resources for us to remain competitive, and we may not receive commensurate returns if we are not successful in achieving the outcomes we expect (either on the timelines we expect or at all). The realization of any of these risks could result in higher traffic acquisition costs, lower CPC levels and reduced margins on our advertising services, loss of market share, reduced user traffic to our websites and reduced advertising by hotel companies and other accommodation advertisers on our websites.

Our success depends on continued innovation to provide features and services that make our websites and apps useful for users. While we have offered users the opportunity to search for alternative accommodation, such as vacation rentals, on our websites and apps, our primary historical focus has been on helping users search for accommodation at hotels. If user preferences shift away from traditional hotel-based accommodation, we may face challenges in integrating and monetizing new types of accommodation into our platform since those properties may have attributes substantially different from hotel rooms, our traditional area of focus. In addition, the online travel industry is rapidly evolving, and if we fail to predict the manner in which that market develops or if our competitors are able to acquire a larger share of the aggregate online accommodation searches at our expense, our financial performance may be harmed. In addition, we do not currently offer users the ability to search for air travel, rental cars, tours, cruises and other services with our advertisers, while they can book or otherwise obtain information about at least some of these services on the websites of nearly all of our major competitors. If we are unable to provide users with information they deem useful, or our competitors are able to provide more attractive offers for accommodation coupled with attractive offers for other services, or if our users demand to see more comprehensive offers akin to those of our competitors, this may have a substantial negative effect on our competitiveness, business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our competitors are constantly innovating in online accommodation-related services and features. As a result, we must continue to invest significant resources in research and development to continuously improve the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of our services. The emergence of alternative platforms and niche competitors who may be able to optimize services or strategies have required, and will continue to require, new and costly investments in technology. We have invested, and in the future may invest, in new business strategies and services to attain competitiveness. Some of the changes we are implementing may require us to make investments into what we perceive as longer-term profitable returns at the expense of short-term profitability, and as a result, we may continue to prioritize the quality of user experience over short-term monetization.

In the future, we may need to provide alternative hotel listing products, potentially including paid and non-paid placements, to ensure we have a competitive coverage of rates globally. These strategies and services may not succeed, and, even if successful, our revenue may not increase or we may not achieve the longer-term profitable returns that we expect. In addition, we may fail to adopt and adapt to new technology, especially as text-based Internet search, including through Google and Amazon, potentially moves to video and voice interfaces over the coming years, or we may not be successful in developing technologies that operate effectively across multiple devices and platforms. New developments in other areas could also make it easier for competitors to enter our markets due to lower up-front technology costs.

If we are unable to continue offering innovative services or do not provide sufficiently comprehensive results for our users, we may be unable to attract additional users and advertisers or retain our current users and advertisers, which may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our ability to attract users to our services depends in large part on providing a comprehensive set of accommodation search results and a broad range of offers across price ranges. To do so, we maintain relationships with OTAs, hotel chains, independent hotels and alternative accommodation providers to include their data in our search results. Although we maintain a very large searchable database of properties from around the world, we do not have relationships with some significant potential advertisers, including some major hotel chains, many independent hotels, smaller chains and certain large providers of alternative accommodations. The risk associated with incomplete coverage in our search results may increase if we see lower user interest in accommodation at hotels, for example as a result of any travel restrictions or because user preferences shift away from hotels to alternative accommodation. In addition, consolidation among advertisers, which may occur at increasing levels because of the general global economic situation, or a change to more coordinated or centralized marketing activities within OTA groups and hotel chains, could reduce the number of offers we have available in our marketplace for each hotel. The realization of any of these risks could make us less popular to our users and reduce the revenue we generate from referrals.

We currently license, and incorporate into our websites, content and technology services from third parties. As we continue to improve the overall quality of our products, we may introduce new features that require us to incorporate new content or services, and this may require us to license additional rights. We cannot be sure that such technology will be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. In particular, certain third parties provide us with map products, content such as consumer reviews that we provide to our users along with our proprietary rating scores and hotel related data and information. If any of our third-party data providers terminate their relationships with us, the information that we provide to users may be limited or the quality of the information may suffer, which may negatively affect the implementation of our strategic initiatives, users’ perception of the value of our product and our reputation.

Many events beyond our control can adversely affect the travel industry, with a corresponding negative impact on our business and results of operations. Natural disasters, including hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, and other natural phenomena, public health threats, such as outbreaks of the Zika virus, the Ebola virus, avian flu and, most recently, COVID-19, as well as other pandemics and epidemics, have disrupted normal travel patterns and levels in the past. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative impact on our global business volumes, particularly in 2020 and 2021 and a severe outbreak of new (vaccine-resistant) variants of these viruses, other airborne contagious diseases or another pandemic, may result in governmental authorities imposing or re-imposing restrictions and recommending precautions to mitigate the health crisis. The travel industry is also sensitive to other events that may discourage travel, such as work stoppages or labor unrest, political instability, regional hostilities. Any change in the global geopolitical environment, including any escalation or unexpected change in circumstances in the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine or the ongoing conflict affecting the Middle Eastern region, may have a negative impact on our business. We do not have insurance coverage against loss or business interruption resulting from war and terrorism, and we may be unable to fully recover any losses we sustain due to other factors beyond our control under our existing insurance coverage. The occurrence of any of the foregoing events may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our platform is available in a large number of jurisdictions outside the Eurozone. As a result, we face exposure to movements in currency exchange rates around the world. Changes in foreign exchange rates can amplify or reduce changes in the underlying trends in our Advertising Spend and revenue. A large portion of our advertising expenses are incurred in the local currency of the particular geographic market in which we advertise, with a significant amount incurred in U.S. dollar. Although we largely denominate our CPCs in euro and have relatively little direct foreign currency translation with respect to our revenue, we believe that our advertisers’ decisions on the share of their booking revenue they are willing to pay to us are based on the currency in which the hotels being booked are priced. Accordingly, we have observed that advertisers tend to adjust their CPC bidding based on the relative strengthening or weakening of the euro as compared to the local functional currency in which the booking with our advertisers is denominated. Currency exchange-related exposures also include but are not limited to re-measurement gains and losses from changes in the value of foreign denominated monetary assets and liabilities; translation gains and losses on foreign subsidiary financial results that are translated into euro upon consolidation; fluctuations in hotel revenue and planning risk related to changes in exchange rates between the time we prepare our annual and quarterly forecasts and when actual results occur.

We do not currently hedge our foreign exchange exposure. Depending on the size of the exposures and the relative movements of exchange rates, if we choose not to hedge or fail to hedge effectively our exposure, we could experience a material adverse effect on our financial statements and financial condition. As we have seen in some recent periods, in the event of severe volatility in foreign exchange rates, these exposures can increase, and the impact on our results of operations can be more pronounced. In addition, the current environment and the global nature of our business have made hedging these exposures more complex.

We are subject to the risk that a counterparty to one or more of our customer arrangements will default on its performance obligations. A counterparty may fail to comply with its commercial commitments, which could then lead it to default on its obligations with little or no notice to us. This could limit our ability to take action to mitigate our exposure. Additionally, our ability to mitigate our exposures may be constrained by the terms of our commercial arrangements or because market conditions prevent us from taking effective action. In addition, our ability to recover any funds from financially distressed or insolvent counterparties is limited, and our recovery rates in such instances have historically been very low. Because a majority of our accounts receivable are owed by Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, delays or a failure to pay by any of these advertisers could result in a significant increase in our credit losses, and we may be unable to fund our operations. Counterparties may also be located in countries where enforcement of our creditors’ rights is more difficult than in the countries where our major OTA advertisers are located. If one of our counterparties becomes insolvent or files for bankruptcy, our ability to recover any losses suffered as a result of that counterparty’s default may be limited by the liquidity of the counterparty or the applicable laws governing the bankruptcy proceedings, and in any event, the customers of that counterparty may seek redress from us, even though the booking with that counterparty was not conducted on our platform. In addition, almost all of our agreements with OTAs, hotel chains and independent hotels may be terminated at will or upon prior notice of thirty days or less by either party. In the event of such default or termination, we could incur significant losses or reduced revenue, which could adversely impact our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

We are involved in various legal proceedings and disputes involving alleged infringement of third-party intellectual property rights, competition and consumer protection laws, including, but not limited to, the legal proceedings described in the following risk factor and in "Item 8: Financial information - A.    

Consolidated statements and other financial information - Legal Proceedings". These matters may involve claims for substantial amounts of money or for other relief that might necessitate changes to our business or operations. The defense of these actions has been, and will likely continue to be, both time consuming and expensive and the outcomes of these actions cannot be predicted with certainty. Determining provisions for pending litigation is a complex, fact-intensive process that requires significant legal judgment. It is possible that unfavorable outcomes in one or more such proceedings could result in substantial payments that would adversely affect our business, consolidated financial position, results of operations, reputation or cash flows in a particular period.

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. For example, on January 20, 2020, the Australian Federal Court issued a judgment in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) case against us regarding our advertising and website display practices in Australia. On April 22, 2022, the Australian Federal Court issued a judgment ordering us to pay a penalty of AUD 44.7 million. We paid the penalty balance of €29.6 million (AUD 44.7 million) in the second quarter of 2022 and costs arising from the proceedings. Parts of the court’s opinions included views that differed significantly from those of other national regulators and raised concerns about the function of our marketplace and the adequacy of disclosures to consumers regarding how advertisers that pay higher CPCs generally receive better advertising placement on our website. Since then, two purported class actions have been filed in Israel and Ontario, Canada, making allegations about our advertising and/or display practices broadly similar to aspects of the case brought by the ACCC. Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in the Ontario action was denied on November 28, 2022. Plaintiffs have since filed a notice of appeal asking that the motion for class certification be granted. A hearing regarding that appeal took place on November 17, 2023, with a decision still pending. A case management hearing in the class action filed in Israel recently took place. The matter remains at a relatively early stage.

Should other national courts or regulators take a similar view of our business model to that of the Australian Federal Court and the ACCC, or should changes in our business practices or those prevalent in our sector following the attention brought on by this litigation or other regulatory matters reduce the attractiveness, competitiveness or functionality of our platform and the services we offer, or should our reputation or that of our sector continue to suffer, or should we have to pay substantial amounts due to any such regulatory action or proceeding, our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects could be adversely affected.

In addition, many governmental authorities in the markets in which we operate are also considering additional and potentially diverging legislative and regulatory proposals that would increase the level and complexity of regulation of Internet display, disclosure and advertising activities. There also are, and will likely continue to be, an increasing number of laws and regulations pertaining to the Internet and online commerce that may relate to liability for information retrieved from, transmitted over or displayed on the Internet, display of certain taxes, charges and fees, online editorial, user-generated or other third-party content, user or other third-party privacy, data security, behavioral targeting and online advertising, taxation, liability for third-party activities and the quality of services.

Personal data information is increasingly subject to legislation and regulations, and the enforcement thereof, in numerous jurisdictions around the world. We are in particular subject to the EU (European Union) General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 or “GDPR”, in effect since May 25, 2018, as well as the ePrivacy Directive (and local laws implementing the ePrivacy Directive) regarding the use of cookies and similar technologies.

Both of these pieces of legislation have recently led to the imposition of significant fines on various companies by EU data protection authorities and/or similar enforcement actions. Due to the global nature of our operations, we are 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, India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, U.S. state privacy laws and others.

A number of these data protection laws (including the GDPR and the UK GDPR) contain restrictions on processing of personal data, including lawful processing ground, cross-border transfers of personal data, mandatory breach reporting to regulators and, under certain circumstances, to the individuals whose personal data was compromised in the breach.

Many other jurisdictions have adopted or are in the process of adopting data protection regulations, which are sometimes inconsistent or conflicting. While we strive to monitor and comply with this complex and ever-changing patchwork of laws, a failure or perceived or alleged failure by us or our third party providers to comply with data privacy requirements in one of the jurisdictions where we operate or target users may significantly harm our businesses, including by subjecting us to regulatory investigations or enforcement, lawsuits (including class actions), fines, sanctions or other penalties that could negatively affect our reputation, business, financial condition and results of operations. In general, negative publicity we might receive regarding any actual or perceived violations of consumer privacy rights, including fines and enforcement actions against us or other similarly placed businesses, may also impair consumers’ trust in our privacy practices and make them reluctant to give their consent to share their data with us. 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 and we may incur substantial compliance-related costs and expenses that are likely to increase over time. Implementation of and compliance with these laws and regulations may be more costly or take longer than we anticipate, or could otherwise adversely affect our business operations, including by causing us to divert resources from other initiatives and projects to address these evolving compliance and operational requirements, all of which could negatively impact our financial position or cash flows.

The United States (acting through, among other government agencies, the SEC, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)), as well as foreign authorities of other jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom and the European Union, continue to be focused on the implementation and enforcement of economic and trade and anti-corruption laws and regulations, across industries. For example, U.S. sanctions broadly prohibit transactions conducted within U.S. jurisdiction in, with, involving or relating to certain countries and territories subject to comprehensive sanctions, including, currently, the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria, and certain specifically designated individuals and entities (including the Government of Venezuela and those individuals and entities listed on OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List), as well as parties owned (and with respect to the Government of Venezuela, owned or controlled) by such sanctioned individuals and entities. In addition, as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, governmental authorities in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, among others, launched an expansion of coordinated sanctions and export control measures, including targeted sanctions against certain individuals and entities and prohibitions or restrictions on new investments and other financial, commercial, or trade-based activities. We believe that our activities comply with applicable trade and anti-corruption laws and regulations, including the laws and regulations administered and enforced by OFAC, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the U.K. Bribery Act. As applicable laws and regulations are enacted or amended, often with little or no advance notice, and the interpretations of those laws and regulations may evolve or come into conflict with other jurisdictions, we cannot guarantee that our programs and policies will be deemed compliant by all applicable regulatory authorities or at all times. In the event that our controls should fail or are found not to be in compliance for any reasons, including as a result of changes to our products and services or the behavior of our advertisers, we could be subject to monetary damages, civil and criminal penalties or other regulatory action, litigation and damage to our reputation and the value of our brand.

We regard our intellectual property, including our business processes and other proprietary information, as critical to our success, and we rely on trademark, copyright and trade secret laws, domain name registration, confidentiality and non-disclosure procedures and contractual provisions and license agreements, where applicable, to protect our proprietary rights. If we are not successful in protecting our intellectual property, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Effective trademark and service mark protection may not be available in every country in which our services are provided. The laws of certain countries do not protect proprietary rights, such as trade secrets, to the same extent as the laws of the United States or Europe and, therefore, in certain jurisdictions, we may be unable to protect our proprietary technology adequately against unauthorized third-party copying or use, which could adversely affect our competitive position. In case of the introduction of new trademarks or logos, there is a risk of third parties with older, allegedly similar trademarks challenging the new brand. In addition, certain characteristics of the Internet, in particular the anonymity, may make the protection and enforcement of our intellectual property difficult and in some cases, even impossible. We have licensed in the past, and expect to license in the future, certain of our proprietary rights, such as trademarks, to third parties. These licensees may take actions that might diminish the value of our proprietary rights or harm our reputation, even if we have agreements prohibiting such activity. Moreover, we utilize intellectual property and technology developed or licensed by third parties, and we may not be able to obtain or continue to obtain licenses and technologies from these third parties at all or on reasonable terms. Also, to the extent that third parties are obligated to indemnify us for breaches of our intellectual property rights, these third parties may be unable to meet these obligations. Any of these events may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

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 competitors could attempt to capitalize on our brand recognition by using domain names similar to ours. Domain names similar to ours have been registered in the United States and elsewhere, and in some countries the domain name “trivago,” or spelling variations of it, may be owned by other parties. We may be unable to prevent third parties from acquiring and using domain names that infringe on, are similar to, or otherwise decrease the value of, our brand or our trademarks or service marks. Protecting and enforcing our rights to our domain names and determining the rights of others may require litigation, which, whether or not successful, could result in substantial costs and diversion of management attention, as well as a loss in customer trust in the brand.

Our commercial success depends on our ability to conduct our business without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating any intellectual property owned by third parties. We may be subject to liability if our products, services, software or other technology, or the operations of our business infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate the patents, copyrights, trademarks or other intellectual property rights of third parties. Intellectual property challenges have been increasingly brought against members of the travel industry, and third parties may bring legal claims, or threaten to bring legal claims, that their intellectual property rights are being infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated by us, including by means of counterclaims against us as a result of the assertion of our intellectual property rights. Further, the use of AI/ML technologies in our operations may result in claims by third parties of infringement, misappropriation or other violations of intellectual property, including based on the use of large datasets to train the AI/ML technologies, or the use of output generated by AI/ML technologies, in either case which may contain or be substantially similar to third-party material protected by intellectual property, including patents, copyrights or trademarks.

We do currently, and could in the future, face claims that we have infringed the intellectual property rights of others. Legal proceedings involving intellectual property rights are highly uncertain and can involve complex legal and scientific questions, and any claims against us or such providers could require us to spend significant time and money in litigation or pay damages. Such claims could also delay or prohibit the use of existing, or the release of new, products, services or processes, and the development of new technology or intellectual property. We cannot assure you that we will achieve a favorable outcome for any such claims, and any such actual or threatened claims (whether or not valid) could adversely impact our reputation and result in direct and indirect costs, all of which may have an adverse impact on our operations and financial performance. Even if we believe such third party claims are without merit, a court may hold that we have infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated such intellectual property rights or we may settle claims to avoid the cost and uncertainty of litigation. If we were to be found liable for any such infringement, misappropriation or other violation, we could be required to rebrand, redesign, reengineer or modify our products and services (including our platform), pay substantial monetary damages, including possible treble damages and attorneys’ fees, or royalties and enter into costly license agreements (if available at all) to obtain the rights to use necessary technology, and we could be subject to injunctions preventing us from using some or all of our products, services or technology. Any payments we are required to make and any injunctions with which we are required to comply as a result of infringement claims could be costly.

Even if intellectual property claims brought by or against us are settled or resolved in our favor, because of the substantial amount of discovery required in connection with intellectual property litigation, there is a risk that some of our confidential or proprietary information could be compromised by disclosure during this type of litigation. In addition, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments, and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our securities.

Any of the foregoing could divert management’s attention and materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

We believe our success has depended, and continues to depend, on the efforts and talents of our senior management and our highly skilled team members, including our software engineers and other technology professionals who are key to designing code and algorithms necessary to our business. Our workforce has declined from 1,247 on December 31, 2019 to 651 as of December 31, 2023. This reduction in workforce has resulted in the loss of institutional knowledge, relationships or expertise for critical roles. This reduction may also have a negative impact on employee morale and productivity, and could make it more difficult to retain valuable key employees, divert attention from operating our business, create personnel capacity constraints and hamper our ability to grow, develop innovative products and compete, any of which could impede our ability to operate or meet strategic objectives.

We continue to face intense competition for new talent as the broader job market appears to undergo structural changes that have further exacerbated the competitive environment. We compete with companies that have far greater financial resources than we do as well as companies that promise short-term growth opportunities and/or other benefits. These companies may be able to provide attractive offers to employees in critical roles who have gained valuable and marketable experience in our flat organizational structure. The competition for talent in our industry has in the past and may in the future increase our personnel expenses, which may adversely affect our results of operations. We have experienced changes to our senior management during 2023. We may be unable to hire or retain certain high-performing employees, including senior management, when the price of our ADSs is low, as a significant portion of the compensation they receive consists of equity grants.

If we do not succeed in attracting well-qualified employees, or retaining or motivating existing employees, including senior management, our business would be adversely affected. The loss of the services of any key individual could negatively affect our business.

We use technology and processes to monitor the quality of the internet traffic that we deliver to our advertisers and have identified metrics to demonstrate the quality of that traffic and identify low quality clicks such as non-human processes, including robots, spiders, the mechanical automation of clicking and other types of invalid clicks or click fraud. Even with such monitoring in place, there is a risk that a certain amount of low-quality traffic will be delivered to such online advertisers. Such low-quality or invalid traffic may be detrimental to our relationships with advertisers and could adversely affect our advertising pricing and revenue.

We take a data-driven, testing-based approach to managing our business, where we use our proprietary tools and processes to measure and optimize end-to-end performance of our platform. Our ability to analyze and rapidly respond to the internal data we track enables us to improve our platform and make decisions about allocating marketing spend and ultimately convert any improvements into increased revenue. While the internal data we use to judge the effectiveness of changes to our platform and to make improvements to how we make decisions about allocating Advertising Spend are based on what we believe to be reasonable assumptions and estimates, our internal tools are not independently verified by a third-party and have a number of limitations. We only have access to limited information about user behavior compared to many of our competitors that in many cases can record detailed information about users who log onto their websites or who complete a booking or other transaction with them.

In addition, our ability to track user behavior is also subject to considerable limitations, for example, relating to our ability to use cookies and browser extensions to analyze behavior over time, and to difficulties pertaining to users who use multiple devices to conduct their search for accommodation. In particular, users can block or delete cookies through their browsers or “ad-blocking” software or apps. The most common Internet browsers allow users to modify their browser settings to prevent cookies from being accepted by their browsers or are set to block third-party cookies by default. At least one major browser has introduced extensive privacy features, including the imposition of a strict time limit on tracking tools' lifespans. Another major browser provider has announced a phase-out of third-party cookies for all users by the end of the second half of 2024. Further, the mobile app ecosystem is constantly evolving, in particular with how the operating systems handle third party data tracking and usage. Changes in these technologies or developments further limiting data availability may inhibit our ability to use user and web analytics data to better understand and track our users’ preferences. We use this information to improve our platform, to optimize our marketing campaigns and our advertisers’ campaigns and to detect and prevent fraudulent activities, which all may be adversely affected. We believe that many of our competitors, in particular Google, have substantial advantages compared to us in their ability to understand and track users' behavior. In addition, we are to a significant extent dependent upon certain advertisers for specific types of user information, including, for example, as to whether a user ultimately completed a booking. Our or our advertisers’ methodologies for tracking this information may change over time. Some countries have already adopted digital services tax, or other taxes of a similar nature, while other countries may also adopt such taxes in the future. In addition to increasing our operational expenses, digital services tax or other taxes of a similar nature make it more difficult for us to measure the marginal efficiency of our Advertising Spend among marketing channels as such taxes affect not only how we allocate our spend but also how these marketing channels and our advertisers make decisions about their businesses.

Additionally, our use of such tracking tools may be subject to regulation by certain data protection laws.

Furthermore, we incorporate AI into certain of our offerings. The use of AI presents risks and challenges, including that algorithms may be flawed, datasets may be insufficient, erroneous, stale, or contain biased information, or content chosen for display to users by AI systems may be discriminatory, offensive, illegal, or otherwise harmful. These deficiencies and other failures of AI systems could subject us to competitive harm, regulatory action, legal liability, and brand or reputational harm. In addition, AI's sophistication in mimicking human behavior can also make it more difficult to detect fraudulent activities, such as click fraud and fake reviews, thereby potentially jeopardizing our reputation and relationships with advertisers. See also – “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.”

If the internal tools we use to judge the effectiveness of changes to our platform produce or are based on information that is incomplete or inaccurate, or we do not have access to important information, or if we are not sufficiently rigorous in our analysis of that information, or if such information is the result of algorithm or other technical or methodological errors, the decisions we make relating to our website, marketplace and allocation of marketing spend may not result in the positive effects in terms of profitability, revenue and user experience that we expect, which may negatively impact our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining internal controls over financial reporting, disclosure controls, and compliance with other requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the rules promulgated by the SEC thereunder. 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. In addition, our independent registered public accounting firm is required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Satisfying these requirements requires us to dedicate a significant amount of time and resources, including for the development, implementation, evaluation and testing of our internal controls over financial reporting. Although no material weaknesses were identified in connection with the attestation of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2023, 2022 or 2021, our management cannot guarantee that our internal controls and disclosure controls will prevent all possible errors or fraud. In addition, the internal controls that we have implemented could fail to be effective in the future. This failure could result in material misstatements in our financial statements, result in the loss of investor confidence in the reliability of our financial statements and subject us to regulatory scrutiny and sanctions. This could, in turn, harm our business and the market value of our ADSs. In addition, we may be required to incur costs in improving our internal controls system and the hiring of additional personnel.

We continue to transition certain business and financial systems to systems that reflect the size, scope and complexity of our operations, such as an internally developed tool to manage the invoicing process and additional third-party tools which assist us with system integration and financial management. The process of migrating our legacy systems could disrupt our ability to timely and accurately process and report key aspects of our financial statements as we will rely on these systems for information that is included in or otherwise relevant for our financial statements. As of January 1, 2024, trivago migrated to a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to continue replacing legacy systems. While the implementation of these systems is intended to increase accuracy of financial reporting and reduce our reliance on manual procedures and actions, the transition may affect the accuracy of reporting as we align some of our processes.

With respect to these systems, certain additional financial controls and processes will be required and may result in changes to the current control environment. These changes will need to be assessed for effective implementation and effectiveness in mitigating inherent risk in these processes. This evaluation could result in deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting, including material weaknesses, in future periods. Any difficulties in implementing the new software or related failures of our internal control over financial reporting could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects, and could cause harm to our reputation. Furthermore, there is a risk that the implemented systems may fail during their initial implementation phases, which could have a further operational impact if the legacy systems are discontinued.

The risk of a cybersecurity-related attack by bad actors or third parties seeking unauthorized access to our data or users' data, or to disrupt our ability to provide service, is persistent. An increasing number of companies, including those with significant online operations, such as us, have increasingly become susceptible to breaches of their security, some of which have involved sophisticated tactics and techniques. While we take measures to guard against the type of activity that can lead to data breaches, the techniques used by bad actors to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently and often are unknown until launched against a target. As such, we may be unable to anticipate these tactics and techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures.

We cannot guarantee that our security measures or the security measures of external service providers will prevent all security breaches, intrusions or attacks, as computer circumvention tools and techniques become more advanced. A party that is able to circumvent our security systems or the systems of an external service provider could improperly obtain confidential information or cause significant disruptions to our operations. Further, despite the data recovery abilities covering the data hosted by cloud-hosted services, any breaches to our systems may leave us vulnerable to service outages, disruptions in access to our services or loss of ours or customers’ material data which we may be unable to recover. In the past, we have experienced cyber-related fraud and “denial-of-service” type of attacks on our system, which have made portions of our website unavailable for periods of time. Any actions that impact the availability of our website or apps could cause a loss of substantial business volume during the occurrence of any such incident and such risks are likely to increase as the tools to carry out such actions become more advanced and sophisticated.

Cybersecurity threats may also be amplified by improper use of AI in addition to other related technologies, which may further increase our exposure to security breaches, intrusions or attacks and other cybersecurity risks, as attackers harness its capabilities to launch more complex, automated, and targeted attacks and may require us to spend additional resources to further strengthen our defenses against such threats. In addition to the considerable resources needed to address or mitigate their effects, security breaches could result in reputational harm and negative publicity with users and advertisers whether existing or potential, losing confidence in the security of our systems. Security breaches could also expose us to risk of loss, possible liability, and subject us to regulatory or criminal penalties and sanctions as well as civil litigation, including under various complex and evolving data protection and cybersecurity laws.

Our brand, reputation and ability to attract and retain users to use our websites and apps depend upon the reliable performance of our network infrastructure and content delivery processes. We have experienced interruptions in these systems in the past, including server failures that temporarily slowed down the performance of our websites and apps, in particular as we opted to use more cloud-based services. We may experience service interruptions in the future. Interruptions in these systems, whether due to system failures, computer viruses or physical or electronic break-ins, could affect the security or availability of our services on our websites and apps and prevent or inhibit the ability of users to access our service, which, in turn, can have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, business and results of operation.

Problems with the reliability or security of our systems could harm our reputation. Damage to our reputation and the cost of remedying these problems could negatively affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

While we still lease or own servers for internal communication and services, our systems mostly rely on cloud-hosted services. We are therefore reliant upon external providers, including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, to provide us with cloud computing infrastructure. Any disruption to our use of services furnished by these providers or an unanticipated increase in costs from using those services could negatively impact our business operations. Our systems and operations are vulnerable to damage or interruption from fire, flood, power loss, telecommunications failure, terrorist attacks, acts of war, electronic and physical break-ins, computer viruses, earthquakes and similar events. The occurrence of any of the foregoing events could result in damage to our systems or could cause them to fail completely, and our insurance may not cover such events or may be insufficient to compensate us for losses that may occur.

Our systems are not completely redundant worldwide, so a failure of our system at one site could result in reduced functionality for our users, and a total failure of our systems could cause our websites or apps to be inaccessible to our users. Problems faced by our third-party service providers with the telecommunications network providers with which they contract or with the systems by which they allocate capacity among their users, including us, could adversely affect the experience of our users. Our third-party service providers could decide to close their facilities without adequate notice. Any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy or reorganization, faced by our third-party service providers or any of the service providers with whom they contract may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. If our third-party service providers are unable to keep up with our growing needs for capacity, this could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects. Any errors, defects, disruptions or other performance problems with our services could harm our reputation and may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

We depend on the use of sophisticated information technologies and systems, including technology and systems used for websites and apps, customer service, supplier connectivity, communications, fraud detection and administration. As our operations grow in size, scope and complexity, we need to continuously improve and upgrade our systems and infrastructure to offer an increasing number of user-enhanced services, features and functionalities, while maintaining or improving the reliability and integrity of our systems and infrastructure. In addition, we may not be able to maintain our existing systems or replace or introduce new technologies and systems as quickly as we would like or need in a cost-effective manner. If these changes result in our infrastructure being unreliable or if they do not result in the benefits we anticipate, our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects could be adversely affected.

Because AI/ML is a developing technology in its nascency, legal frameworks for AI/ML governance are unsettled, quickly developing, and unpredictable. The misuse of AI raises new ethical issues and poses a number of risks that cannot be fully mitigated. Using AI/ML while the technology is still developing may expose us to additional liability, reputational harm, and threats of litigation, particularly if the AI/ML we adopt produces errors, bias, hallucinations, harmful content, discrimination, intellectual property infringement or misappropriation, data privacy or cybersecurity issues, or otherwise does not function as intended. For example, AI/ML technologies are highly reliant on the collection and analysis of large amounts of data and complex algorithms, which may be overbroad, insufficient, or contain biased information.

Moreover, with the use of AI/ML technologies, there often exists a lack of transparency of the sources of data used to train or develop the AI technologies or how inputs are converted to outputs and we cannot fully validate this process and its accuracy. The accuracy of such inputs and the resulting impacts on the results of AI/ML technologies cannot be verified and could result in outputs that may include or be derived from inaccurate or erroneous information.

The emergence of increasingly sophisticated AI/ML models in recent years has also prompted lawmakers around the world to consider regulation of AI. These regulations are in effect or under consideration in several jurisdictions where we do business. Moreover, regulations relating to AI/ML technologies may also impose certain obligations on organizations, and the costs of monitoring and responding to such regulations, as well as the consequences of non-compliance, could have an adverse effect on our operations or financial condition. For example, in February 2024, representatives of European Union Member States reached agreement on the proposed text of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), one of the first comprehensive regulations on AI. While the legislative text of the EU AI Act has yet to be formally approved by the European Parliament, the proposed text introduces a risk-based framework for regulating AI systems and models. Based on the proposed text, non-compliance with the EU AI Act’s strictest prohibitions may lead to fines of up to €35 million, or 7% of a group’s total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher. If adopted, the EU AI Act is expected to apply after a transitional period of two years after its entry into force (although certain rules may come into effect at an earlier time). Other substantial markets, like the U.S. and the U.K., are also in the process of considering AI-specific regulation. For example, the White House's Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence devises a framework for the U.S. government, among other things, to regulate private sector use and development of certain foundation models. The legal landscape surrounding AI therefore remains uncertain and will require close monitoring in the coming years, as trivago increasingly applies AI technologies.

The use of AI/ML, including potential inadvertent disclosure of personally identifiable information, could also lead to legal and regulatory investigations and enforcement actions, or may give rise to specific obligations, including required notices, consents and opt-outs, under various data privacy, protection and cybersecurity laws and regulations in a number of jurisdictions. Further, despite our ongoing investment in AI/ML, there is no assurance that new laws and regulations will not restrict the ways we can use the AI/ML we have adopted, including by limiting or changing global AI/ML adoption trends that may impede our strategy. Unfavorable legal and regulatory developments could also impact our vendors, suppliers and industry as a whole, and we may be exposed to increased risk of liability, reputational harm, and other significant costs if we need to make business and operational changes in response to such developments. Our failure, or perceived failure, to comply fully with developing interpretations of AI/ML laws and regulations, or meet evolving and varied stakeholder expectations and industry standards, could harm our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.

We have developed our trivago brand through extensive marketing campaigns, website promotions, customer referrals and the use of a dedicated sales force. We cannot guarantee that our brand will not be damaged by circumstances that are outside our control or by third parties, such as hackers, or interfaces with their clients, such as subcontractors’ employees or sales forces, with a resulting negative impact on our activities. For example, we may be subject to negative press accounts or other negative publicity regarding our product, brand or business practices, which may, among other things, cause us reputational harm. Such negative publicity may become more prevalent as a result of announced or future regulatory investigations or litigation relating to practices in our marketplace and related online travel-related market segments. We believe this occurred when the Australian Federal Court issued a judgment finding that we had engaged in conduct in breach of the Australian Consumer Law. Social media’s reach may magnify any negative publicity and messages can “go viral” necessitating effective crisis response in real time. A failure on our part to protect our image, reputation and the brand under which we market our products and services may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

We have delegated considerable operational autonomy and responsibility to our employees, including allowing our employees flexible working hours that allow them to determine when, where and for how long they work. We also often make changes to our internal organizational structure to support operational autonomy and individual advancement. Consequently, people in key positions may have less experience in the relevant operational areas. As our employees have significant autonomy and may lack experience when performing new operational roles, this could result in poor decision-making. We have also implemented remote working for our employees since the COVID-19 pandemic but have since limited the number of days that employees may work remotely. Our competitors may offer more operational autonomy and flexibility regarding remote work, which may, in turn, make it difficult for us to retain and motivate our employees. The realization of any of these risks could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

We have made small strategic acquisitions in the past. We expect to continue to evaluate a wide array of potential strategic transactions. We could enter into transactions that could be material to our financial condition and results of operations. The process of integrating an acquired company, business or technology may create unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. The areas where we face risks in respect of acquisitions include:

•diversion of management time and focus from operating our business to acquisition diligence, negotiation and closing processes, as well as post-closing integration challenges;

•implementation or remediation of controls, procedures and policies at the acquired company;

•coordination of product, engineering and sales and marketing functions;

•retention of key employees from the businesses we acquire;

•responsibility for liabilities or obligations associated with activities of the acquired company before the acquisition;

•litigation or other claims in connection with the acquired company; and

•in the case of foreign acquisitions, the need to integrate operations across different geographies, cultures and languages and to address the particular economic, currency, political and regulatory risks associated with specific countries.

Furthermore, companies that we have acquired, and that we may acquire in the future, may employ security and networking standards at levels we find unsatisfactory. The process of enhancing infrastructure to improve security and network standards may be time-consuming and expensive and may require resources and expertise that are difficult to obtain. Acquisitions could also increase the number of potential vulnerabilities and could cause delays in detection of a security breach, or the timeliness of recovery from a breach. Failure to adequately protect against attacks or intrusions could expose us to security breaches of, among other things, personal user data and credit card information that may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with our past or future acquisitions and investments could delay or eliminate any anticipated benefits of such acquisitions or investments, incur unanticipated liabilities and may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

As of December 31, 2023, Expedia Group owned Class B shares representing 60.0% of our issued shares and 84.1% of the voting power in us. As long as Expedia Group owns a majority of the voting power in us, Expedia Group will be able to control many corporate actions that require a shareholder vote.

This voting control limits the ability of other shareholders to influence corporate matters and, as a result, we may take actions that shareholders other than Expedia Group do not view as beneficial. This voting control may also discourage transactions involving a change of control of our company, including transactions in which you as a holder of ADSs (representing our Class A shares) might otherwise receive a premium for your shares. Furthermore, Expedia Group generally has the right at any time to sell or otherwise dispose of any Class A shares and Class B shares that it owns, including the ability to transfer a controlling interest in us to a third party, without the approval of the holders of our Class A shares and without providing for the purchase of Class A shares.

Various conflicts of interest among us and Expedia Group could arise. Ownership interests of directors or officers of Expedia Group in our shares, and ownership interests of members of our management board and supervisory board in the stock of Expedia Group, or a person’s service as either a director or officer of both companies, could create or appear to create potential conflicts of interest, including when those directors and officers are faced with decisions relating to our company. In recent years, Expedia Group, and brands affiliated with it, consistently accounted for a substantial portion of our revenue.

Potential conflicts of interest could also arise if we decide to enter into any new commercial arrangements with Expedia Group’s businesses in the future or in connection with Expedia Group’s desire to enter into new commercial arrangements with third parties. Expedia Group has the right to separately pursue acquisitions of businesses that we may also be interested in acquiring, or companies that may directly compete with us. Expedia Group may choose to pursue these corporate opportunities directly rather than through trivago.

Furthermore, disputes may arise between Expedia Group and us relating to our past and ongoing relationships, and these potential conflicts of interest may make it more difficult for us to favorably resolve such disputes, including those related to:

•tax, employee benefit, indemnification and other matters;

•the nature, quality and pricing of services Expedia Group agrees to provide to us;

•sales, other disposals, purchases or other acquisitions by Expedia Group of shares in us (including when our share price is lower than in comparable prior periods); and

•business combinations involving us.

We may not be able to resolve any potential conflicts, and even if we do, the resolution may be less favorable to us than if we were dealing with an unaffiliated party. While we are controlled by Expedia Group, we may not have the leverage to negotiate amendments to these agreements, if required, on terms as favorable to us as those we would negotiate directly with an unaffiliated third party.

Holders of ADSs may exercise voting rights with respect to the Class A shares represented by their ADSs only in accordance with the provisions of the deposit agreement. The deposit agreement provides that, upon receipt of notice of any meeting of holders of our Class A shares, including any general meeting of our shareholders, the depositary will, as soon as practicable thereafter, fix a record date for the determination of ADS holders who shall be entitled to give instructions for the exercise of voting rights. Upon timely receipt of notice from us, the depositary shall distribute to the holders as of the record date (i) the notice of the meeting or solicitation of consent or proxy sent by us, (ii) a statement that such holder will be entitled to give the depositary instructions and a statement that such holder may be deemed, if the depositary has appointed a proxy bank as set forth in the deposit agreement, to have instructed the depositary to give a proxy to the proxy bank to vote the Class A shares underlying the ADSs in accordance with the recommendations of the proxy bank and (iii) a statement as to the manner in which instructions may be given by the holders.

You may instruct the depositary of your ADSs to vote the Class A shares underlying your ADSs. Otherwise, you will not be able to exercise your right to vote unless you withdraw our Class A shares underlying the ADSs you hold. However, you may not know about the meeting far enough in advance to withdraw those Class A shares. The depositary, upon timely notice from us, will notify you of the upcoming vote and arrange to deliver voting materials to you. We cannot guarantee that you will receive the voting materials in time to ensure that you can instruct the depositary to vote the Class A shares underlying your ADSs. In addition, the depositary and its agents are not responsible for failing to carry out voting instructions or for the manner of carrying out voting instructions. This means that you may not be able to exercise your right to vote, and there may be nothing you can do if the Class A shares underlying your ADSs are not voted as you had requested.

Under the deposit agreement for the ADSs, we may choose to appoint a proxy bank. In this event, the depositary will be deemed to have been instructed to give a proxy to the proxy bank to vote the Class A shares underlying your ADSs at shareholders’ meetings if you do not vote in a timely fashion and in the manner specified by the depositary.

The effect of this proxy is that you cannot prevent the Class A shares representing your ADSs from being voted, and it may make it more difficult for shareholders to exercise influence over our company, which could adversely affect your interests. Direct holders of our Class A shares are not subject to this proxy.

The depositary of our ADSs has agreed to pay to you the cash dividends or other distributions it or the custodian receives on our Class A shares after deducting its fees and expenses. You will receive these distributions in proportion to the number of our Class A shares your ADSs represent. However, the depositary is not responsible if it decides that it is unlawful or impractical to make a distribution available to any holders of ADSs. We have no obligation to take any other action to permit the distribution to any holders of our ADSs or Class A shares. This means that you may not receive the distributions we make on our Class A shares or any value from them if it is illegal or impractical for us to make them available to you. These restrictions may have a material adverse effect on the value of your ADSs.

Your ADSs, which may be evidenced by American Depositary Receipts, are transferable on the books of the depositary. However, the depositary may close its books at any time or from time to time when it deems expedient in connection with the performance of its duties. The depositary may refuse to deliver, transfer or register transfers of your ADSs generally when our books or the books of the depositary are closed, or at any time if we or the depositary think it is advisable to do so because of any requirement of law, government or governmental body, or under any provision of the deposit agreement, or for any other reason.

The continued operation of, and strategic initiatives for, our business will require substantial cash. Accordingly, although we paid an extraordinary dividend last year, we may not pay any other dividends on our ADSs for the foreseeable future. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our management board and will depend upon our results of operations, financial condition, contractual restrictions relating to indebtedness we may incur, restrictions imposed by applicable law and other factors our management board deems relevant.

We are a Dutch public company with limited liability (naamloze vennootschap). Our corporate affairs are governed by our articles of association, the rules of our management board and our supervisory board, our other internal rules and policies and by Dutch law. The rights of shareholders and the responsibilities of members of our management board and supervisory board may be different from the rights and obligations of shareholders in companies governed by the laws of U.S. jurisdictions. In the performance of their duties, our management board and supervisory board are required by Dutch law to consider the interests of our company, its shareholders, its employees and other stakeholders, in all cases with due regard to the principles of reasonableness and fairness. It is possible that some of these parties will have interests that are different from, or in addition to, your interests as a holder of ADSs representing our Class A shares.

We are a Dutch public company with limited liability (naamloze vennootschap) and are subject to the DCGC. The DCGC contains both principles and best practice provisions for management boards, supervisory boards, shareholders and general meetings of shareholders, financial reporting, auditors, disclosure, compliance and enforcement standards. The DCGC applies to all Dutch companies listed on a government-recognized stock exchange, whether in the Netherlands or elsewhere, including Nasdaq.

The DCGC is based on a “comply or explain” principle. Accordingly, companies are required to disclose in their annual reports filed in the Netherlands whether they comply with the provisions of the DCGC. If they do not comply with those provisions (e.g., because of a conflicting U.S. requirement), the company is required to give the reasons for such non-compliance. We do not comply with all the best practice provisions of the DCGC. This may affect your rights as a shareholder and you may not have the same level of protection as a shareholder in a Dutch company that fully complies with the DCGC.

We have a dual-class share structure such that our share capital consists of Class A shares and Class B shares. In respect of matters requiring the votes of shareholders, based on our dual-class share structure, holders of Class A shares are entitled to one vote per share, while holders of Class B shares are entitled to ten votes 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. Each of our ADSs represents five Class A shares.

As of December 31, 2023, Expedia Group owned Class B shares representing 60.0% of our issued shares and 84.1% of the voting power in us, and Rolf Schrömgens, one of our founders and a member of our supervisory board, owned Class B shares representing 8.2% of our issued shares and 11.5% of the voting power in us due to the disparate voting powers associated with our dual-class share structure. Mr. Schrömgens also holds Class A shares representing approximately 9.9% of our issued shares. See “Item 7: Major shareholders and related party transactions”. As a result of the dual-class share structure and the concentration of ownership, Expedia Group has considerable influence over matters such as decisions regarding mergers, consolidations and the sale of all or substantially all of our assets, appointment and dismissal of management board members and supervisory board members and other significant corporate actions.

This concentration of ownership may discourage, delay or prevent a change in control of our company, which could have the effect of depriving the holders of ADSs (representing Class A shares) of the opportunity to receive a premium for their shares as part of a sale of our company and may reduce the price of our Class A shares. This concentrated control limits your ability to influence corporate matters that holders of Class A shares may view as beneficial.

As a company with its registered office in Germany, we are subject to German insolvency laws in the event any insolvency proceedings are initiated against us including, among other laws and regulations, the German Insolvency Code (Insolvenzordnung) and Regulation (EU) 2015/848 of the European Parliament and of the Council of May 20, 2015 on insolvency proceedings. Should a court in another Member State of the European Union determine that our center of main interests (COMI) is situated in that Member State, the courts in that Member State will in principle have jurisdiction over the insolvency proceedings initiated against us and the insolvency laws of that Member State will in principle apply to us, in accordance with and subject to such the aforementioned Regulation and the rules promulgated thereunder. Insolvency laws in Germany or the relevant other Member State of the European Union, as applicable, may offer our shareholders less protection than they would have under U.S. insolvency laws and make it more difficult for them to recover the amount they could expect to recover in a liquidation or restructuring under U.S. insolvency laws.

Dutch law and provisions of our articles of association may in the future impose various procedural and other requirements that would make it more difficult for shareholders to effect certain corporate actions and would make it more difficult for a third-party to acquire control of us or to effect a change in the composition of our management board and supervisory board. For example, such provisions include our dual-class share structure that gives greater voting power to the Class B shares owned by Expedia Group and Mr. Schrömgens, one of our founders and a member of our supervisory board, the binding nomination structure for the appointment of our management board members and supervisory board members, and the provision in our articles of association which provides that certain shareholder decisions can only be passed if proposed by our management board.

Dutch law also allows for staggered multi-year terms of our managing directors and supervisory directors, as a result of which only part of our managing directors and supervisory directors may be subject to appointment or re-appointment in any given year.

Furthermore, in accordance with the DCGC, shareholders who have the right to put an item on the agenda for our general meeting or to request the convening of a general meeting shall not exercise such rights until after they have consulted our management board. If exercising such rights may result in a change in our strategy (for example, through the dismissal of one or more of our managing directors or supervisory directors), our management board must be given the opportunity to invoke a reasonable period of up to 180 days to respond to the shareholders’ intentions. If invoked, our management board must use such response period for further deliberation and constructive consultation, in any event with the shareholder(s) concerned, exploring alternatives. At the end of the response time, our management board, supervised by our supervisory board, shall report on this consultation and the exploration of alternatives to our general meeting. The response period may be invoked only once for any given general meeting and shall not apply (i) in respect of a matter for which either a response period or a statutory cooling-off period (as discussed below) has been previously invoked or (ii) in situations where a shareholder holds at least 75% of our issued share capital as a consequence of a successful public bid.

Moreover, our management board, with the approval of our supervisory board, can invoke a cooling-off period of up to 250 days when shareholders, using their right to have items added to the agenda for a general meeting or their right to request a general meeting, propose an agenda item for our general meeting to dismiss, suspend or appoint one or more managing directors or supervisory directors (or to amend any provision in our articles of association dealing with those matters) or when a public offer for our company is made or announced without our support, provided, in each case, that our management board believes that such proposal or offer materially conflicts with the interests of our company and its business. During a cooling-off period, our general meeting cannot dismiss, suspend or appoint managing directors and supervisory directors (or amend the provisions in our articles of association dealing with those matters) except at the proposal of our management board. During a cooling-off period, our management board must gather all relevant information necessary for a careful decision-making process and at least consult with shareholders representing 3% or more of our issued share capital at the time the cooling-off period was invoked, as well as with our Dutch works council (if we or, under certain circumstances, any of our subsidiaries would have one). Formal statements expressed by these stakeholders during such consultations must be published on our website to the extent these stakeholders have approved that publication. Ultimately one week following the last day of the cooling-off period, our management board must publish a report in respect of its policy and conduct of affairs during the cooling-off period on our website. This report must remain available for inspection by shareholders and others with meeting rights under Dutch law at our office and must be tabled for discussion at the next general meeting. Shareholders representing at least 3% of our issued share capital may request the Enterprise Chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, or the Enterprise Chamber (Ondernemingskamer), for early termination of the cooling-off period. The Enterprise Chamber must rule in favor of the request if the shareholders can demonstrate that:

•our management board, in light of the circumstances at hand when the cooling-off period was invoked, could not reasonably have concluded that the relevant proposal or hostile offer constituted a material conflict with the interests of our company and its business;

•our management board cannot reasonably believe that a continuation of the cooling-off period would contribute to careful policy-making; or

•other defensive measures, having the same purpose, nature and scope as the cooling-off period, have been activated during the cooling-off period and have not since been terminated or suspended within a reasonable period at the relevant shareholders’ request (i.e., no ‘stacking’ of defensive measures).

We are organized and existing under the laws of the Netherlands, and, as such, under Dutch private international law rules the rights and obligations of our shareholders vis-à-vis the Company arising from Dutch corporate law and our articles of association, and the civil liability of our directors and executive officers is governed in certain respects by the laws of the Netherlands. We are not domiciled in the United States and most members of our management board and supervisory board are also non-residents of the United States. As a result, depending on the subject matter of the action brought against us and/or our officers, shareholders in certain jurisdictions other than the Netherlands, such as the United States, may have difficulty bringing an action against us. If a Dutch court has jurisdiction with respect to such action, that court will apply Dutch procedural law and Dutch private international law to determine the law applicable to that action. Depending on the subject matter of the relevant action, a competent Dutch court may apply a law other than the laws of the United States. It is unclear whether a Dutch court would impose civil liability on us or any of our directors and executive officers in an original action based solely on the federal securities laws of the United States brought in a court of competent jurisdiction in the Netherlands.

In addition, substantially all of our assets are located outside of the United States, and as such, it may not be possible to effect service of process within the United States on us or our directors and executive officers or to enforce judgements against us or them in U.S. courts, including judgements predicated upon civil liability provisions of the federal securities laws of the United States.

As of the date of this annual report, (i) there is no treaty in force between the United States and the Netherlands providing for the reciprocal recognition and enforcement of judgments, other than arbitration awards, in civil and commercial matters and (ii) both the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (2005) and the Hague Judgments Convention (2019) have entered into force in the Netherlands, but have not entered into force in the United States. Consequently, a judgment rendered by a court in the United States will not automatically be recognized and enforced by the competent Dutch courts. However, if a person has obtained a judgment rendered by a court in the United States that is enforceable under the laws of the United States and files a claim with the competent Dutch court, the Dutch court will in principle give binding effect to that United States judgment if (i) the jurisdiction of the United States court was based on a ground of jurisdiction that is generally acceptable according to international standards, (ii) the judgment by the United States court was rendered in legal proceedings that comply with the Dutch standards of proper administration of justice including sufficient safeguards (behoorlijke rechtspleging), (iii) binding effect of such United States judgment is not contrary to Dutch public order (openbare orde) and (iv) the judgment by the United States court is not incompatible with a decision rendered between the same parties by a Dutch court, or with a previous decision rendered between the same parties by a foreign court in a dispute that concerns the same subject and is based on the same cause, provided that the previous decision qualifies for recognition in the Netherlands. Even if such a United States judgment is given binding effect, a claim based thereon may, however, still be rejected if the United States judgment is not or no longer formally enforceable. Moreover, if the United States judgment is not final (for instance when appeal is possible or pending) a competent Dutch court may (i) postpone recognition until the United States judgment has become final, (ii) refuse recognition under the understanding that recognition can be asked again once the United States judgment has become final, or (iii) impose as a condition for recognition that security is posted.

A competent Dutch court may deny the recognition and enforcement of punitive damages or other awards. Moreover, a competent Dutch court may reduce the amount of damages granted by a United States court and recognize damages only to the extent that they are necessary to compensate actual losses or damages. Finally, there may be specific other instances, including pursuant to anti-boycott rules and regulations, where Dutch law prohibits the recognition and enforcement of a United States judgment. Thus, United States investors may not be able, or experience difficulty, to enforce a judgment obtained in a United States court against us or our officers.

As a foreign private issuer whose ADSs are listed on Nasdaq, we are permitted to follow certain home country corporate governance practices pursuant to exemptions under Nasdaq rules. A foreign private issuer must disclose in its annual reports filed with the SEC each requirement under Nasdaq rules with which it does not comply, followed by a description of its applicable home country practice. Our Dutch home country practices may afford less protection to holders of our ADSs. We follow in certain cases our home country practices and rely on certain exemptions provided by Nasdaq rules to foreign private issuers, including, among others, an exemption from the requirement to hold an annual meeting of shareholders no later than one year after an issuer’s fiscal year end, exemptions from the requirement that a board of directors be comprised of a majority of independent directors, exemptions from the requirements that an issuer’s compensation committee should be comprised solely of independent directors, and exemptions from the requirement that share incentive plans be approved by shareholders. See “Item 16G.     Corporate governance” for more information on the significant differences between our corporate governance practices and those followed by U.S. companies under Nasdaq rules. As a result of our reliance on the corporate governance exemptions available to foreign private issuers, you will not have the same protection afforded to shareholders of companies that are subject to all of Nasdaq’s corporate governance requirements.

In addition to the exemptions we rely on as a foreign private issuer, we also rely on the “controlled company” exemption under Nasdaq corporate governance rules. A “controlled company” under Nasdaq corporate governance rules is a company of which more than 50% of the voting power is held by an individual, group or another company. Our principal shareholder, Expedia Group, controls a majority of the combined voting power of our outstanding shares, making us a “controlled company” within the meaning of Nasdaq corporate governance rules.

As a controlled company, we have elected not to comply with certain corporate governance standards, including the requirement that a majority of our supervisory board members are independent and the requirement that our compensation committee consist entirely of independent directors.

Since our incorporation, we have had, on a continuous basis, our place of effective management in Germany. Therefore, we believe that we are a tax resident of Germany under German national tax laws. As an entity incorporated under Dutch law, however, we also qualify as a tax resident of the Netherlands under Dutch national tax laws. However, given that substantially all of our operations (along with all employees, management board members and fixed assets) are in Germany, based on current tax laws of the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as applicable income tax treaties, and current interpretations thereof, we believe that we are tax resident solely in Germany for the purposes of the 2012 convention between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to taxes on income. Our sole tax residency in Germany for purposes of the above-mentioned tax treaty is subject to the application of the provisions on tax residency as stipulated in such treaty as amended from time to time. The MLI, Germany and the Netherlands entered into, among other countries, should not, as of this date, affect such tax treaty’s rules regarding tax residency.

The applicable tax laws, tax treaties or interpretations thereof may change, including the MLI choices and reservation. Furthermore, whether we have our place of effective management in Germany and are as such solely tax resident in Germany is largely a question of fact and degree based on all the circumstances, rather than a question of law, which facts and degree may also change. Changes to applicable tax laws, tax treaties or interpretations thereof and changes to applicable facts and circumstances (e.g., a change of board members or the place where board meetings take place), or changes to applicable income tax treaties, including a change to Multilateral Instrument (MLI) choices and reservation, may result in us also becoming a tax resident of the Netherlands or another jurisdiction (other than Germany), potentially also triggering an exit tax liability in Germany or the Netherlands. As a consequence, our overall effective income tax rate and income tax expense could materially increase, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects, which could cause our ADS price and trading volume to decline.

The application of various national and international income and non-income tax laws, rules and regulations to our historical and new services is subject to interpretation by the applicable taxing authorities. These taxing authorities have become more aggressive in their interpretation and enforcement of such laws, rules and regulations over time, as governments are increasingly focused on ways to increase revenue. This has contributed to an increase in the audit activity and harsher stances taken by tax authorities. As such, additional taxes or other assessments may be in excess of our current tax reserves or may require us to modify our business practices to reduce our exposure to additional taxes going forward, any of which may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Significant degrees of judgment and estimation are required in determining our worldwide tax liabilities. In the ordinary course of our business, there are transactions and calculations, including intercompany transactions and cross-jurisdictional transfer pricing for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain or otherwise subject to interpretation. Tax authorities may disagree with our intercompany charges, including the amount of or basis for such charges, cross-jurisdictional transfer pricing or other matters and assess additional taxes. Although we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, the final determination of tax audits could be materially different from our historical income tax provisions and accruals in which case we may be subject to additional tax liabilities, possibly including interest and penalties, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Many of the underlying laws, rules or regulations imposing taxes and other obligations were established before the growth of the digital economy. If the tax or other laws, rules or regulations were amended, or if new unfavorable laws, rules or regulations were enacted, the results could increase our tax payments or other obligations, prospectively or retrospectively, subject us to interest and penalties, decrease the demand for our services if we pass on such costs to the user, result in increased costs to update or expand our technical or administrative infrastructure or effectively limit the scope of our business activities if we decided not to conduct business in particular jurisdictions. As a result, these changes may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

In addition, in the past, Germany and foreign governments have introduced proposals for tax legislation, or have adopted tax laws, that could have a significant adverse effect on our tax rate, or increase our tax liabilities, the carrying value of deferred tax assets, or our deferred tax liabilities. For example, pursuant to the release of “base erosion and profit shifting” (BEPS) final Action Plans, and its implementation through the MLI, several countries including the countries in which we operate, have begun implementing the adopted MLI positions. Further, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) work on a two pillar solution to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalization of the economy is expected to result in new legislation in various countries. In particular, in many countries new legislation is already applicable, or is in the process of being adopted, regarding the so-called OECD Pillar 2 initiative, which provides for a global minimum tax for multinational groups with an annual revenue of above €750 million. Germany and the Netherlands have adopted a new Minimum Tax Act (Mindeststeuergesetz in Germany and Wet minimumbelasting 2024 in the Netherlands) implementing the OECD Pillar 2 rules and transposing the European Union’s directive on Pillar 2 (Council Directive (EU) 2022/2523 of December 14, 2022). Generally, the Pillar 2 rules are effective for business years starting after December 30, 2023. We and our subsidiaries would not be in scope of the Pillar 2 rules on a standalone basis, but certain Pillar 2 rules may nevertheless apply to us given our consolidation within the Expedia Group. It should also be noted that the United States has not yet introduced legislation to comply with the OECD Pillar 2 rules, which gives rise to certain complexities in the application of the Pillar 2 rules in countries where they are already applicable. We continue to assess the Pillar 2 tax and compliance consequences. Moreover, several countries have unilaterally adopted digital services taxes or other similar taxes, while some other countries may adopt such taxes in the future. All ongoing developments mentioned above and other new initiatives could result, depending on how they are ultimately implemented, in incremental taxes and costly compliance requirements, and thus may adversely impact our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

We are constantly exploring changes to our business structures to support our operations while managing operational and financial risk for ourselves and our shareholders and to make our services more financially attractive to our customers. Though these changes would be undertaken to manage operational and financial risk, we may experience unanticipated material tax liabilities which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects.

Our effective tax rate in the future could also be adversely affected by changes to our operating structure, changes in the mix of earnings in countries with differing statutory tax rates, or changes in the deferred tax assets and liabilities position.

Based on the market price of our ADSs and the composition of our income, assets and operations, we do not believe that we should be treated as a PFIC for U.S. federal income tax purposes for the taxable year ended December 31, 2023. However, the application of the PFIC rules to us is subject to certain ambiguity. In addition, this is a factual determination that must be made annually after the close of each taxable year based on the composition of our income and assets as well as the trading price of our ADSs.

Because the value of our assets, including goodwill, for purposes of the asset test may be determined by reference to the market price of our ADSs, fluctuations in the market price of the ADSs may cause us to become a PFIC. Therefore, there can be no assurance that we will not be classified as a PFIC for any future taxable year. We would be classified as a PFIC if, after the application of certain look-through rules, either: (1) 75% or more of our gross income for such year is “passive income” (as defined in the relevant provisions of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended), or (2) 50% or more of the value of our assets (determined on the basis of a quarterly average) during such year is attributable to assets that produce or are held for the production of passive income. Certain adverse U.S. federal income tax consequences could apply to a U.S. Holder (as defined in “Item 10: Additional information - E. Taxation - Material U.S. federal income tax considerations ”) if we are treated as a PFIC for any taxable year during which such U.S. Holder holds ADSs.

Although we are a Dutch-incorporated company with German tax residency, if we pay dividends, such dividends will be subject to German (and potentially Dutch) withholding tax. Currently, the applicable German withholding tax rate is 26.375% of the gross dividend. This German tax can be reduced to the applicable double tax treaty rate, however, by an application filed by the tax payer for a specific German tax certificate with the German Federal Central Tax Office (Bundeszentralamt für Steuern). If a tax certificate cannot be delivered to the ADS holder due to applicable settlement mechanics or lack of information regarding the ADS holder, holders of the shares or ADSs of a German tax resident company may be unable to benefit from any available double tax treaty relief while they may be unable to file for a credit of such withholding tax in its jurisdiction of residence. Further, the payment made to the ADS holder equal to the net dividend may, under the tax law applicable to the ADS holder, qualify as taxable income that is in turn subject to tax, which could mean that a dividend is effectively taxed twice. Our ADSs have been issued by a depositary with a direct link to the U.S. Depository Trust Company, or DTC, which should reduce the risk that the applicable German withholding tax certificate cannot be delivered to the ADS holder. However, there can be no guarantee that the information delivery requirement can be satisfied in all cases, which could result in adverse tax consequences for affected ADS holders.

Investors should note that the interpretation circular (Besteuerung von American Depositary Receipts (ADR) auf inländische Aktien) issued by the German Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Finanzen) dated May 24, 2013 (reference number IV C 1-S2204/12/10003), or ADR Tax Circular, is not binding for German courts and it is not clear whether or not a German tax court will follow the ADR Tax Circular in determining the German tax treatment of our specific ADSs. Further concerns regarding the applicability of the ADR Tax Circular may arise due to the fact that the ADR Tax Circular refers only to German stock and not to shares in a Dutch N.V. If the ADSs are determined not to fall within the scope of application of the ADR Tax Circular, and thus profit distributions made with respect to the ADSs are not treated as a dividend for German tax purposes, the ADS holder would not be entitled to a refund of any taxes withheld on the dividends under German tax law. See “Item 10: Additional information - E. Taxation - German taxation of ADS holders”).

If we pay dividends on our ADSs, we may need to withhold tax on such dividends both in Germany and the Netherlands. As an entity incorporated under Dutch law, any dividends distributed by us are subject to Dutch dividend withholding tax on the basis of Dutch domestic law. However, on the basis of the double tax treaty between Germany and the Netherlands, the Netherlands will be restricted in imposing these taxes if we continue to be a tax resident of Germany and our place of effective management is in Germany. However, Dutch dividend withholding tax is still required to be withheld from dividends if and when paid to Dutch resident holders of our ADSs (and non-Dutch resident holders of our ADSs that have a permanent establishment in the Netherlands to which their shareholding is attributable). As a result, upon a payment (or deemed payment) of dividends, we will be required to identify our shareholders and/ or ADS holders in order to assess whether there are Dutch residents (or non-Dutch residents with a permanent establishment in the Netherlands to which the shares are attributable) in respect of which Dutch dividend tax has to be withheld.

Such identification may not always be possible in practice. If the identity of our shareholders and/or ADS holders cannot be determined, withholding of both German and Dutch dividend tax from such dividend may occur upon a payment of dividends.

Furthermore, the withholding tax restriction referred to above is based on the current choices and reservation of Germany under the MLI with respect to the dual resident entities. If Germany changes its choices and reservation on the MLI, we may not be entitled to any benefits of the double tax treaty between Germany and the Netherlands, including the withholding tax restriction, as long as Germany and the Netherlands do not reach an agreement on our tax residency for purposes of the double tax treaty between Germany and the Netherlands, except to the extent and in such manner as may be agreed upon by the authorities. As a result, any dividends distributed by us during the period till when no such agreement has been reached between Germany and the Netherlands, may be subject to withholding tax both in Germany and the Netherlands.

The market price for our ADSs has been, and will likely continue to, be volatile, and there continues to be relatively few ADSs outstanding, resulting in relatively low liquidity in our ADSs. Our results of operations are also subject to material quarterly fluctuations that may affect the volatility of our ADSs. In addition, the market price of our ADSs may fluctuate significantly in response to a number of factors, most of which we cannot control, including:

•actual or anticipated fluctuations in our results of operations;

•extraordinary dividends or equity restructurings;

•variance in our financial performance from the expectations of market analysts or from the financial guidance that we have communicated;

•announcements by us or our competitors of significant business developments, acquisitions or expansion plans;

•changes in the prices of our competitors or those paid to us by our customers;

•our involvement in litigation or regulatory investigations;

•our sale of ADSs or other securities in the future;

•a sale of ADSs by our major shareholders in the future;

•market conditions in our industry;

•changes in key personnel;

•the trading volume of our ADSs;

•changes in the estimation of the future size and growth rate of our markets; and

•general economic and market conditions.

The stock markets, including Nasdaq, have in the past experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many Internet and technology companies.

Sales of a substantial number of our ADSs in the public market, or the perception that these sales could occur, could adversely affect the price of our ADSs and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional ADSs. Rolf Schrömgens, one of our founders and a member of our supervisory board, continues to hold a significant shareholding in us and has made sales of ADSs in recent years.

Mr. Schrömgens may conduct further significant sales of ADSs in the future. See “Item 7: Major shareholders and related party transactions - A. Major Shareholders" for more information. The ADSs are freely tradable without restriction under the Securities Act, except for any of our ADSs that may be held or acquired by our management board members, supervisory board members, executive officers and other affiliates, as that term is defined in the Securities Act or ADSs sold in transactions not subject to the registration requirements of the Securities Act, which will in each case be restricted securities under the Securities Act. Restricted securities may not be sold in the public market unless the sale is registered under the Securities Act or an exemption from registration is available.

In the future, we may also issue our securities in connection with investments or acquisitions. The amount of ADSs issued in connection with an investment or acquisition could constitute a material portion of our then-outstanding ADSs. Any issuance of additional securities in connection with investments or acquisitions may result in additional dilution to you.

The trading market for our ADSs depends in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. If securities or industry analyst coverage results in downgrades of our ADSs or publishes inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our ADS price would likely decline.

A.History and development of the company

trivago was conceived by graduate school friends Rolf Schrömgens, Peter Vinnemeier and Stephan Stubner, who initially operated trivago out of a garage in Düsseldorf, Germany. trivago GmbH was incorporated in 2005, and its business eventually developed into a leading global hotel and accommodation search platform. Mr. Stubner left the company in 2006 and another graduate school friend, Malte Siewert, joined the founding team.

Between 2006 and 2008, several investors invested €1.4 million in trivago. In 2010, Insight Venture Partners acquired 27.3% of the equity ownership of trivago for €42.5 million. Expedia Group acquired 63.0% of the equity ownership in trivago in 2013, purchasing all outstanding equity from non-Founders and some outstanding equity from the Founders and subscribing for a certain number of newly issued shares for a total of €477 million. Expedia Group subsequently increased its shareholdings slightly in the second and fourth quarter of 2016 through the purchase of shares held by certain employees who had previously exercised stock options.

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 +49-211-3876840000.

Our agent in the United States is Cogency Global Inc., and its address is 122 East 42nd Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10168.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") maintains an Internet site (http:// www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. We also maintain a website that includes our SEC filings and other information at ir.trivago.com.

For information on our principal capital expenditures and divestitures, see "Note 3 - Acquisitions and other investments" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report.

Since January 1, 2022, there have been no public takeover offers by third parties with respect to our shares, and we have not made any public takeover offers in respect of any other company’s shares.

Management has identified three reportable segments, which correspond to our three operating segments: the Americas, Developed Europe and Rest of World. Our Americas segment is comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, the United States and Uruguay. Our Developed Europe segment is comprised of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Our Rest of World segment is comprised of all other countries, the most significant by revenue of which are Japan, Turkey, Australia, Hong Kong and India. Other revenue is included in Corporate and Eliminations, along with all corporate functions and expenses, excluding direct advertising.

We determined our operating segments based on how our chief operating decision makers manage our business and evaluate operating performance. Our primary operating metric is Return on Advertising Spend, or ROAS, for each of our segments, which compares Referral Revenue to Advertising Spend.

For additional information relating to the development of our company, see “Item 4: Information on the company - B. Business overview.”

trivago is a global hotel and accommodation search platform. We are focused on reshaping the way travelers search for and compare different types of accommodations, such as hotels, vacation rentals and apartments, while enabling our advertisers to grow their businesses by providing them with access to a broad audience of travelers via our websites and apps. Our platform allows travelers to make informed decisions by personalizing their search for accommodation and providing them with access to a deep supply of relevant information and prices. In the year ended December 31, 2023, we offered access to more than 5.0 million hotels and other types of accommodation, including 3.8 million units of alternative accommodation such as vacation rentals and apartments, in over 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 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 hotel and accommodation 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.

In the year ended December 31, 2023, we generated revenue of €485.0 million, net loss of €164.5 million, and Adjusted EBITDA of €54.1 million. Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure, and we therefore direct you to “Item 5: Operating and financial review and prospects - G. Non-GAAP financial measures" for an additional description of Adjusted EBITDA and a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income/(loss). See, also "Item 5: Operating and financial review and prospects - Results of Operations - Revenue" for Referral Revenue by segment, representing a breakdown according to principal geographic markets.

Our accommodation search platform forms the core of our user experience. It is a search and comparison product, and users do not book directly on our platform. 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 maintain one of the largest searchable databases of accommodations in the world. As of December 31, 2023, our database included more than 5.0 million (2022: 5.0 million) hotels and other types of accommodations, gathered through OTAs, hotel chains, independent hotels and providers of alternative accommodations. As of December 31, 2023, we offered access on our search platform to more than 3.8 million (2022: 3.8 million) units of alternative accommodation, such as vacation rentals and private apartments.

Our users initially search via a text-based search function, which supports searches across a broad range of criteria. The search results show a user an accommodation listing page. For hotels, the page contains aggregated information, including:

•Accommodation information: We display information that we believe is relevant to the user, such as the name, pictures, amenities, star rating and distance to selected location;

•trivago ratings index: We aggregate millions of ratings globally. We produce a score for each property, which is updated daily to render relevant and valuable insights for our users while saving them time when searching for the ideal hotel or other accommodation. The rating is a single, easy-to-use score out of ten;

•Reviews: We provide reviews from third parties in a clear and concise format; and

•Price comparison: We prominently display a suggested advertised deal for each hotel or other accommodation, while also listing additional available offers from our advertisers in a list format, including room types, amenities and payment options. To learn more about how we determine the prominence given to offers and their placement in our search results, see "Marketplace" below.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We also generate travel content as a means of engaging with travelers, which is distributed online via social media, our online magazine and email.

We market our services and directly acquire traffic for our websites by purchasing travel and hotel-related keywords from general search engines and through advertisements on other online marketing channels. These activities include advertisements through search engines, such as Bing, Google, Naver and Yahoo! and through display advertising campaigns on advertising networks, affiliate websites and social media sites. Mobile app marketing remains important given the high usage of that device type.

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.

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 and CPA (or 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 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.

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.

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.

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. 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).

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.

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.

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 bids submitted by our advertisers (or CPC equivalent, as the case may be).

CPC 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.

We want to be the obvious choice for price-savvy travelers searching for a hotel. 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. This provides a strong foundation for us to build upon. We expect the following four strategic priorities will propel our success.

Reignite our globally recognized brand. We believe that rebuilding our branded visitor baseline is the key to return to growth, and we expect it to be a multi-year effort. We are continuously optimizing our brand budget allocation as well as our ads. Over time, we anticipate these efforts will enhance the efficiency of our marketing investments, and we expect to see the compounding effects to materialize over time.

Enhance our hotel search experience. We are simplifying the search for hotels across hundreds of sites and millions of accommodations, saving travelers significant time. We are constantly enhancing the user experience by conducting tests on all aspects of our product. We are focused on improving the content and visual experience we offer to travelers. The power of AI/ML allows us to customize our search results and innovate our search experience.

Deliver the best deal discovery experience. We want to be the shortcut for finding great hotel deals and better prices. We believe this is where we can leverage our core competencies and differentiate our proposition. We aim to introduce new ways to spotlight savings and great deals in our search results with the objective of getting price-savvy travelers to return to our platform.

Empower our advertising partners to realize their full potential on trivago. By co-creating and innovating with our advertising partners, we aim to unlock user value throughout our meta-search platform and to remain a relevant marketing channel for our advertisers, driving high quality traffic.

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 apartments; and

•Industry participants, including metasearch and content providers.

We generate the large majority of our Referral Revenue from OTAs. Certain brands affiliated as of the date hereof with our majority shareholder, Expedia Group, including Brand Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotwire, Wotif, Vrbo and ebookers, in the aggregate, accounted for 36% of our Referral Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023. Booking Holdings and its affiliated brands, including Booking.com, Agoda and priceline.com, accounted for 43% of our Referral Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023.

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 "Item 3: Key information - D. Risk factors".

We compete with other advertising channels for hotel 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 rates and advertisers’ implied return on investment. While we compete with OTAs, hotel chains and independent hotels for user traffic, these parties also represent the key contributors to our revenue and supply of hotels and other accommodation.

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.

We compete with other advertising channels for hotel 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 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 Facebook and X (Twitter);

•Websites offering display advertising;

•Email marketing software and tools;

•Online video channels, such as YouTube; and

•Mobile app marketing.

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. We generally expect to experience higher Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) in the first and fourth quarter of the year as we typically expect to advertise less in the periods outside of high travel seasons. 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.

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. Reflecting a brand revamp, we additionally registered a trivago trademark reflecting the new style as well as a new trivago logo trademark in our key markets.

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 Data Protection Act 2018 the Brazilian General Data Protection Law (LGPD) and the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents 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, which may in turn influence other states or even the US Congress to pass comparable legislation, 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 has 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 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. 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"), and the ePrivacy Regulation).

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. Other substantial markets, like the US and the UK, are also in the process of considering AI-specific legislation. 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 “Item 3: Key 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.

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.

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.

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.

The following chart depicts our corporate structure and percentages of economic interest as of the date hereof based on the number of shares outstanding as of December 31, 2023:

trivago N.V. is the direct or indirect holding company of our subsidiaries. As of December 31, 2023, we do not own, directly or indirectly, any subsidiaries that we consider to be "significant".

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.

As a result of negotiations of our lease contract for the Campus in Düsseldorf, Germany, we signed an amendment to the contract, which became effective in January 2021. The agreement includes the return of unused office spaces and a corresponding reduction of rent, as well as the sale of certain fixed assets related to the space to the landlord. Please refer to "Note 7 - Leases" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report for further details.

We have additional 381 square meters of leased office space in Spain.

None.

Our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022 was €485.0 million and €535.0 million, respectively, representing a decrease of 9%. Our Referral Revenue for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022 was €476.8 million and €521.8 million, respectively, representing a decrease of 9%.

In the year ended December 31, 2023, Referral Revenue decreased on a year-over-year basis by 19% and 9% in Americas and Developed Europe, respectively, while it increased by 25% in Rest of World, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

We recorded a net loss for the year ended December 31, 2023 of €164.5 million, compared to a net loss for the year ended December 31, 2022 of €127.2 million, representing a larger loss of €37.3 million from 2022 to 2023.

Adjusted EBITDA for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022 was €54.1 million and €107.5 million, respectively. Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure, and we therefore direct you to “Item 5: Operating and financial review and prospects - G. Non-GAAP financial measures” for an additional description of Adjusted EBITDA and a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income/(loss).

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. We call this our Referral Revenue. 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 “Item 4: Information on the company - B. Business overview - Marketplace".

We also earn revenue by offering our advertisers business-to-business (B2B) solutions, such as access services and subscription fees earned from advertisers for the trivago Business Studio PRO Package. We also offered white label services and display advertisements, which were discontinued during 2023. Revenues earned from these B2B solutions did 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.

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.

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 bids or CPA bids our advertisers submit on our marketplace. CPC bids submitted by our advertisers (or a CPC-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.

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. 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 reportable segments for the years indicated. Percentages calculated below are based on the unrounded amounts and therefore may not recalculate on a rounded basis.

We track the ratio of our Referral Revenue to our advertising expenses, or ROAS. We believe that ROAS is an indicator of the effectiveness of our advertising, and it is our primary operating metric. Historically, we believe that our advertising has been successful in generating additional revenue. We invest in many kinds of marketing channels, such as TV, search engine marketing, display and affiliate marketing, email marketing, social media, online video, mobile app marketing, content marketing, sponsorship and endorsement.

Our ROAS by reportable segment for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022 was as follows:

			Year ended December 31,
ROAS by segment (unaudited)			2023						2022
Americas			148.3		%				164.4		%
Developed Europe			146.0		%				158.6		%
Rest of World			150.1		%				188.8		%
Consolidated ROAS			147.6		%				164.4		%

Consolidated ROAS decreased to 147.6% for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to 164.4% in the same period in 2022. ROAS decreased by 16.1ppts, 12.6ppts and 38.7ppts in Americas, Developed Europe and Rest of World, respectively, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

Americas

In the year ended December 31, 2023, ROAS in Americas decreased to 148.3% as the relative decrease in Referral Revenue was greater than the relative decrease in Advertising Spend compared to the same period in 2022. Advertising Spend decreased by €12.6 million, or 9.6%, to €119.0 million in the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, mainly due to adjustments made to our performance marketing activities to maintain our ROAS targets. ROAS contribution decreased by €27.4 million, or 32.3%, to €57.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.

Developed Europe

In the year ended December 31, 2023, ROAS in Developed Europe decreased to 146.0% as the relative decrease in Referral Revenue was greater than the relative decrease in Advertising Spend compared to the same period in 2022. Advertising Spend decreased by €2.1 million, or 1.4%, to €147.7 million in the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, mainly due to adjustments made to our performance marketing activities to maintain our ROAS targets, which were partly offset by increased brand investments.

ROAS contribution decreased by €19.9 million, or 22.6%, to €68.0 million in the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.

Rest of World

In the year ended December 31, 2023, ROAS in Rest of World decreased to 150.1% as the relative increase in Advertising Spend was greater than the relative increase in Referral Revenue compared to the same period in 2022. Advertising Spend increased by €20.6 million, or 57.4%, to €56.5 million in the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, mainly driven by a significant increase in marketing activities due to the recovery of travel demand, particularly in Japan. ROAS contribution decreased by €3.5 million, or 11.0%, to €28.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.

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. In recent years, we have observed a number of factors that can influence their 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;

•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.

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.

During 2023, we observed lower levels of monetization compared to the prior year when we had benefited from a strong auction in our marketplace and the seasonal uptick in monetization had been particularly pronounced. Foreign exchange headwinds also negatively impacted our financial performance. We observed higher average booking values during 2023, although the levels normalized during the fourth quarter. At the beginning of 2024, monetization levels were volatile, varying significantly over the course of January.

In addition, we observed increased volatility in the results of our performance marketing campaigns during 2023. Higher levels of competition in performance marketing channels continued to negatively impact our results, which resulted in traffic volume declines, particularly in our Developed Europe and Americas segments. As we continued to be disciplined with ROAS targets, we experienced significant declines in performance marketing traffic volumes. In addition, we observed ad format tests on Google that negatively impacted traffic volumes to our platform. These declines were partly offset by increased traffic volumes in our Rest of World segment, where we continue to observe a strong recovery in post-COVID travel and the positive impact of marketing investments.

We announced in September a renewed focus on our brand marketing strategy which aims to fuel long-term growth. We kicked off our new marketing campaigns in mid-December 2023, rolling out globally our new creative and refreshed logo in an effort to rejuvenate the brand. We expect the short-term effect of these brand investments on our traffic volumes to be limited and aim to see revenue growth in the medium-term; however, we believe that these investments will help us increase our brand baseline traffic over time, while negatively impacting our profitability in the near-term.

We continue to closely monitor the ongoing conflict affecting the Middle Eastern region. A prolonged or further escalation in the conflict may have a negative impact on our Rest of World segment results. We expect the new and existing geopolitical conflicts, disruptions to supply chain operations, and inflationary pressures to continue to have an impact on the travel market going forward. Against this backdrop, we believe travelers will have an increased need to compare prices as they focus on saving.

As a result of adjustments made to our profitability outlook arising from the announced strategy shift to long-term growth, share price decline, and uncertainty in our operating environment and in the overall economic environment, we performed a quantitative impairment assessment for our annual intangible assets and goodwill impairment test during the third quarter of 2023 resulting in impairment charges totaling €196.1 million. For more information on the impairment charge, see "Note 8 - Goodwill and intangible assets, net" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report.

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 Brand Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotwire, Wotif, Vrbo and ebookers, in the aggregate, accounted for 36% of our Referral Revenue for the year ended 2023. Booking Holdings and its affiliated brands, Booking.com, Agoda and priceline.com accounted for 43% of our Referral Revenue for the year ended 2023. 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.

Our total revenue in the year ended December 31, 2023, consisted of Referral Revenue of €476.8 million and other revenue of €8.2 million.

Total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023 was €485.0 million, representing a decrease of €50.0 million, or 9.3%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. Revenue from third parties for the year ended December 31, 2023, decreased by €49.1 million, or 13.6%, while revenue from related parties decreased by €0.8 million, or 0.5% for the same period.

Referral revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023 was €476.8 million, representing a decrease of €45.0 million, or 8.6%, compared to the same period in 2022. This decrease was primarily driven by softer bidding dynamics on our platform compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, when we had benefited from a strong auction. It was further driven by lower traffic volumes from increased competition in performance marketing channels and a negative foreign exchange rate impact due to the strengthening of the euro against foreign currencies, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. The decrease was partly offset by higher average booking values and better booking conversion compared to the same period in 2022.

The breakdown of Referral Revenue by reportable segment is as follows:

Referral Revenue in Americas in the year ended December 31, 2023, decreased by €40.0 million, or 19.0%, compared to the same period in 2022. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by lower traffic volumes from increased competition in performance marketing channels, softer bidding dynamics on our platform compared to the same period in 2022 when we had benefited from a strong auction, and a negative foreign exchange rate impact due to the weakening of the U.S. dollar against the euro. These were partly offset by higher average booking values compared to the same period in 2022.

Referral Revenue in Developed Europe in the year ended December 31, 2023, decreased by €22.0 million, or 9.3%, compared to the same period in 2022. The decrease was primarily driven by softer bidding dynamics on our platform compared to the same period in 2022 when we had benefited from a strong auction, and by lower traffic volumes from increased competition in performance marketing channels. The decrease was partly offset by better booking conversion and higher average booking values compared to the same period in 2022.

Referral Revenue in Rest of World in the year ended December 31, 2023, increased by €17.0 million, or 25.1%, compared to the same period in 2022, which was mainly driven by higher average booking values, better booking conversion, and an increase in traffic volumes, particularly in Japan. The increase was partly offset by a negative foreign exchange rate impact primarily due to the weakening of the Japanese Yen against the euro, and by a reduction in traffic volumes mostly in Central Eastern Europe compared to the same period in 2022.

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, personnel-related expenses and share-based compensation for our infrastructure operations staff and our customer service team.

Cost of revenue was €12.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, and decreased by €0.7 million, or 6%, compared to the same period in 2022. The decrease was mainly driven by lower data center and cloud-related service provider costs.

Selling and marketing 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.

Selling and marketing expenses for the year ended December 31, 2023, increased by €3.6 million, or 1%, compared to the same period in 2022, primarily driven by the increase in Advertising Spend in the Rest of World segment.

Advertising Spend increased by €5.9 million, or 2%, for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the same period in 2022. Advertising Spend increased by 20.6 million to €56.5 million in Rest of World, while it decreased by €12.6 million and €2.1 million to €119.0 million and €147.7 million in Americas and Developed Europe, respectively, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. The overall increase in Advertising Spend was driven by higher brand investments and was partly offset by lower performance marketing spend. For a more detailed discussion of changes in Advertising Spend by segment, see "Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)" above.

Other selling and marketing expenses excluding share-based compensation for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by €2.1 million, or 9%, compared to the same period in 2022. The decrease was primarily driven by lower expenses incurred to acquire traffic, and lower personnel-related costs from a lower headcount following the discontinuation of certain products and projects in the prior year and as a result of an internal reorganization of existing teams to achieve efficiencies in 2022. The decrease was further driven by cancellation fees incurred in the prior year for contracts related to discontinued products, and was partly offset by higher television advertisement production costs.

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.

			Year Ended December 31,												% Change
(in millions)			2023						2022						2023 vs 2022
Personnel			€	27.3					€	32.4					(16)		%
Share-based compensation			1.7						3.0						(43)		%
Depreciation of technology assets			3.7						4.9						(24)		%
Professional fees and other			16.3						14.6						12		%
Total technology and content			€	49.0					€	54.9					(11)		%
% of total revenue			10.1		%				10.3%

Technology and content expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by €5.9 million, or 11%, compared to the same period in 2022, mainly due to lower personnel-related costs, lower share-based compensation and depreciation expense, partly offset by higher professional fees and other expenses.

Personnel-related costs for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by €5.1 million, or 16%, mainly due a lower headcount following an internal reorganization of existing teams to achieve efficiencies through attrition and headcount reductions as a result of the discontinuation of certain products and projects in 2022. The decrease was further driven by lower severance payments compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

Depreciation expense decreased by €1.2 million, or 24%, mainly due to lower underlying capitalized software and software development cost assets that are typically depreciated over a three year useful life.

Professional fees and other expenses increased by €1.7 million, or 12%, mainly due to higher cloud-related service provider costs and continuous investments to improve our platform. These were partly offset by the non-recurrence of an impairment of capitalized software assets related to discontinued products and projects recognized in the prior year.

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.

General and administrative expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by €22.2 million, or 36%, compared to the same period in 2022, mainly due to lower professional fees and other expenses and lower share-based compensation expense, partly offset by higher personnel-related costs.

The decrease in professional fees and other expenses for the year ended December 31, 2023 was mainly driven by the non-recurrence of the incremental expense of €20.7 million during 2022 in relation to the proceeding brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) against us. The decrease was further driven by lower insurance expenses, and partly offset by ADS cancellation fees incurred in connection with our equity restructuring completed in the year ended December 31, 2023.

Personnel-related costs for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by €3.1 million, or 22%, mainly due to an increase in compensation costs compared to the same period in 2022.

Amortization of intangible assets was €0.1 million in both the year ended December 31, 2023 and in the year ended December 31, 2022, as we amortize intangible assets acquired through the weekengo GmbH acquisition.

We recorded cumulative impairment charges of €196.1 million and €184.6 million in the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. See "Note 8 - Goodwill and intangible assets, net" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report for further details.

Our operating loss was €156.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to an operating loss of €120.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. The larger loss for the year ended December 31, 2023 was mainly driven by lower revenues of €50.0 million, or 9.3% compared to the same period in 2022, mainly due to lower monetization, lower traffic volumes, and negative foreign exchange effects. This larger loss was further driven by the higher impairment of indefinite-lived intangible assets and goodwill totaling €196.1 million compared to €184.6 million recorded in the same period 2022. This was partly offset by the non-recurrence of the incremental expense of €20.7 million recorded in prior year in relation to the proceeding brought by the ACCC against us.

Other income for the year ended December 31, 2023 was €4.7 million compared to other income of €15 thousand in the same period in 2022. The increase was mainly due to a higher interest income in the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, while interest expense and other expense remained mostly flat.

Interest income increased by €4.6 million compared to the same period in 2022 due to higher interest rates on our bank accounts and term deposits held with financial institutions in the current year.

Income tax expense was €12.4 million in the twelve months ended December 31, 2023, compared to €6.6 million in the same period in 2022. Our effective tax rate was (8.2)% in 2023, compared to (5.5)% in 2022. Non-deductible share-based compensation of (pre-tax) €9.5 million in 2023 and €15.3 million in 2022 had an impact on the effective tax rates of (2.0)% and (4.0)% in the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. Non-deductible impairment expenses on goodwill of (pre-tax) €181.9 million in 2023 and €104.6 million in 2022 had an impact on the effective tax rate of (37.4)% and (27.2)% in the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. The release of €0.7 million in uncertain tax position had an impact on the effective tax rate of 0.5% in the year ended December 31, 2023.

The details on the movement in valuation allowance are included in "Note 10 - Income taxes" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report. Other differences relate to one-off items during the year, such as non-deductible expenses which are individually insignificant.

Loss from our equity method investment in UBIO was €0.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to €0.4 million in the same period in 2022.

Market risk is the potential loss from adverse changes in interest rates, foreign exchange rates and market prices. Our exposure to market risk includes our cash, accounts receivable, intercompany receivables, investments and accounts payable. We manage our exposure to these risks through established policies and procedures. Our objective is to mitigate potential income statement, cash flow and market exposures from changes in interest and foreign exchange rates.

We did not experience any significant impact from changes in interest rates and had no outstanding loans during the year ended December 31, 2023.

We conduct business in many countries throughout the world. Because we operate in markets globally, we have exposure to different economic climates, political arenas, tax systems and regulations that could affect foreign exchange rates. Our primary exposure to foreign currency risk relates to transacting in foreign currency and recording the activity in euro. A large portion of our advertising expenses are incurred in the local currency of the particular geographic market in which we advertise, with a significant amount incurred in U.S. dollar. The vast majority of our revenue is denominated in euro. Changes in exchange rates between the functional currency of our consolidated entities and these other currencies will result in transaction gains or losses, which we recognize in our consolidated statements of operations. Our foreign exchange risk relates primarily to the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the euro.

Changes in foreign exchange rates can amplify or reduce changes in the underlying trends in our revenue. Although we have relatively little direct foreign currency translation with respect to our revenue, we believe that our advertisers’ decisions on the share of their booking revenue they are willing to pay to us are based on the currency in which the hotels being booked are priced. Accordingly, we have observed that advertisers tend to adjust their CPC bidding based on the relative strengthening or weakening of the euro as compared to the local functional currency of the advertiser placing the booking in which the booking with our advertisers is denominated.

Future net transaction gains and losses are inherently difficult to predict as they are reliant on how the multiple currencies in which we transact fluctuate in relation to the functional currency of our consolidated entities, the relative composition and denomination of current assets and liabilities for each period, and our effectiveness at forecasting and managing, through balance sheet netting, such exposures. As an example, if the foreign currencies in which we hold net asset balances were to depreciate by 10% against the euro and other currencies in which we hold net liability balances were to appreciate by 10% against the euro, we would recognize foreign exchange losses of €0.5 million based on the net asset or liability balances of our foreign denominated cash, accounts receivable and accounts payable balances as of December 31, 2023. As the net composition of these balances fluctuate frequently, even daily, as do foreign exchange rates, the example loss could be compounded or reduced significantly within a given period.

During the year ended December 31, 2023 we had net foreign exchange rate losses of €0.6 million compared to losses of €0.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2022.

Our customer base includes primarily OTAs, hotel chains and independent hotels. We perform ongoing credit evaluations of our customers and maintain allowances for potential credit losses. We generally do not require collateral or other security from our customers. Expedia Group and affiliates represented 36% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023 and 45% of total accounts receivable as of December 31, 2023. Booking Holdings and its affiliates represented 43% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023 and 25% of total accounts receivable as of December 31, 2023.

For the year ended December 31, 2023, total cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash decreased by €146.7 million to €102.2 million, of which €101.8 million were included in cash and cash equivalents and €0.3 million in short-term restricted cash in the balance sheet. The decrease in total cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash was mainly driven by negative cash flows from financing activities, partly offset by positive cash flows from operating and investing activities.

Our known material liquidity needs for periods beyond the next twelve months are described below in “Item 5: Operating and financial review and prospects - F. Tabular disclosure of contractual obligations.” We believe that our cash from operations, together with our cash balance are sufficient to meet our ongoing capital expenditures, working capital and other capital needs.

The following table summarizes our cash flows for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022:

			Year Ended December 31,
(in millions)			2023						2022
Cash flows provided by operating activities			€	27.8					€	66.3
Cash flows provided by/(used in) investing activities			16.3						(54.9)
Cash flows used in financing activities			(190.4)						(19.6)

For the year ended December 31, 2023, net cash provided by operating activities was €27.8 million, primarily driven by the adjustment of non-cash items totaling €208.2 million included in the period net loss of €164.5 million, partly offset by an overall negative change in operating assets and liabilities of €15.9 million.

Non-cash items reconciled from net loss include the intangible assets and goodwill impairment loss of €196.1 million, which also resulted in the reduction of the net intangible assets balance and the elimination of the goodwill balance as of December 31, 2023, share-based compensation of €9.5 million and depreciation of €4.4 million. These were partly offset by a reduction of deferred income taxes of €3.5 million.

The change in operating assets and liabilities was primarily driven by cash outflows consisting of a decrease in taxes payable of €10.2 million and an increase in taxes receivable of €6.3 million, an increase in prepaid expenses and other assets of €3.6 million, and a decrease in accounts payable of €2.4 million. These cash outflows were partly offset by a decrease in accounts receivable of €6.7 million due to lower revenues in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.

For the year ended December 31, 2023, cash provided by investing activities was €16.3 million, primarily driven by proceeds from sales and maturities of investments of €45.0 million. This was partly offset by the purchase of an investment of €25.2 million and cash outflows of €3.5 million related to capital expenditures, including internal-use software and website development.

For the year ended December 31, 2023, cash used in financing activities was €190.4 million, primarily driven by the one-time extraordinary dividend paid to shareholders in the fourth quarter of 2023 totaling €184.4 million and payments totaling €6.4 million related to withholding taxes on net share settlements of equity awards.

See “Item 4: Information on the company - B. Business overview.”

See “Item 5: Operating and financial review and prospects - A. Operating results.”

Critical accounting policies and estimates are those that we believe are important in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements because they require that we use judgment and estimates in applying those policies. We prepare our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Preparation of the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes requires that we make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities as of the date of the consolidated financial statements, as well as revenue and expenses during the periods reported. We base our estimates on historical experience, where applicable, and other assumptions that we believe are reasonable under the circumstances. Actual results may differ from our estimates under different assumptions or conditions.

There are certain critical estimates that we believe require significant judgment in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements. We consider an accounting estimate to be critical if:

•It requires us to make an assumption because information was not available at the time or it included matters that were highly uncertain at the time we were making the estimate; and

•Changes in the estimate or different estimates that we could have selected may have had a material impact on our financial condition or results of operations.

For more information on each of these policies, see "Note 2 - Significant accounting policies" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report for further details. We discuss information about the nature and rationale for our critical accounting estimates below.

We have operating leases for office space and office equipment. Operating lease right-of-use ("ROU") assets and lease liabilities are recognized at commencement date based on the present value of lease payments over the lease term.

Given the rate implicit in our leases is not typically readily determinable, we have to estimate the Incremental Borrowing Rate ("IBR") to be used as the discount rate in order to measure the present value of future lease payments.

In January 2021, we amended the operating lease agreement for office space in our corporate headquarters, whereby the landlord granted us partial termination of the lease related to certain floor spaces. This amendment was treated as a lease modification. See "Note 7 - Leases" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report for further details.

The IBR was used to derive adjustments to operating lease ROU assets and lease liabilities as of the effective date of the lease modification. Estimating the IBR requires assessing a number of inputs including an estimated synthetic credit rating, collateral adjustments and interest rates. Selecting different inputs for this estimation may result in different adjustments to the carrying value of operating lease ROU assets and lease liabilities. The selected IBR would have to change by more than 70 basis points to result in a materially different post-modification operating lease ROU assets and lease liabilities balance.

We assess goodwill and indefinite-lived assets, neither of which are amortized, for impairment annually as of September 30th, or more frequently, if events and circumstances indicate that an impairment may have occurred.

For the year ended December 31, 2023, we performed a quantitative impairment assessment. A goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible assets impairment charge of €196.1 million was recorded for the quarter ended September 30, 2023 while performing our annual impairment test.

Goodwill is assigned to our three reporting units, which correspond to our three operating segments (Americas, Developed Europe and Rest of World), on the basis of their relative fair values. The fair value of each reporting unit was estimated using a blended analysis of the present value of future discounted cash flows and market valuation approach.

The discounted cash flow model requires significant estimates, including our weighted average cost of capital, revenue growth rates, profitability of our business and long-term rate of growth. Changes in these estimates and assumptions could result in a materially different impairment charge in the period in which an impairment is recognized which could materially affect the estimated fair value of each reporting unit.

The significant estimates within the market valuation approach include identifying similar companies with comparable business factors, such as size, growth, profitability, risk and return on investment, assessing comparable revenue and operating income multiples and the control premium applied in estimating the fair value of the reporting unit.

Indefinite-lived intangible assets consists of trade name, trademarks, and domain names. We base our measurement of the fair value using the relief-from-royalty method. This method assumes that the trade name and trademarks have value to the extent that their owner is relieved of the obligation to pay royalties for the benefits received from them. This method requires us to estimate future revenue for the brand, the appropriate royalty savings rate and an applicable discount rate.

The most significant assumptions used in our current year analysis to determine the fair value of the reporting units were our weighted average cost of capital ("WACC") and long-term growth rate. The most significant assumptions used in determining the fair value of our indefinite-lived intangible assets were the royalty savings rate and the discount rate. The use of different estimates or assumptions in determining the fair value of our goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible assets may result in different values, which could result in an impairment, or in the period in which an impairment is recognized, could result in a materially different impairment charge.

As a result of our annual impairment test performed as of September 30, 2023, we recorded impairment charges to the Developed Europe and Americas reporting unit goodwill balances of €95.5 million and €86.5 million, respectively, which eliminated the goodwill balances in these reporting units. There was no goodwill allocated to the Rest of World reporting unit. Assuming all other assumptions remain constant, if the selected WACC decreased by 100 basis points, there would have been a remaining goodwill balance of €1.6 million in the Americas reporting unit and the goodwill balance in the Developed Europe reporting unit would have remained eliminated. The selected long-term growth rates for the Developed Europe and Americas reporting units were not sensitive for the goodwill impairment test.

As a result of our annual impairment test performed as of September 30, 2023, we recorded an impairment charge of €14.2 million to our indefinite-lived intangible assets. Assuming all other assumptions remain constant, a decrease of 100 basis points in the royalty savings rate would have resulted in a higher impairment charge of €25.1 million, while an increase of 100 basis points in the royalty savings rate would have resulted in no impairment charge. Assuming all other assumptions remain constant, an increase of 100 basis points in the selected discount rate would have resulted in a higher impairment charge of €3.6 million, while a decrease of 100 basis points in the selected discount rate would have resulted in a lower impairment charge of €3.9 million.

As of December 31, 2023, no goodwill balance remained in any reporting unit and the carrying value of our indefinite-lived intangible assets was €75.3 million. See "Note 8 - Goodwill and intangible assets, net" in the notes to our annual consolidated financial statements included in this annual report for further details.

We record income taxes under the liability method. Deferred tax assets and liabilities reflect our estimation of the future tax consequences of temporary differences between the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities for book and tax purposes. We determine deferred income taxes based on the differences in accounting methods and timing between financial statement and income tax reporting. Accordingly, we determine the deferred tax asset or liability for each temporary difference based on the enacted tax rates expected to be in effect when we realize the underlying items of income and expense.

We consider many factors when assessing the likelihood of future realization of our deferred tax assets, including our recent earnings experience by jurisdiction, expectations of future taxable income, and the carryforward periods available to us for tax reporting purposes, as well as other relevant factors. We may establish a valuation allowance to reduce deferred tax assets to the amount we believe is more likely than not to be realized. Due to inherent complexities arising from the nature of our businesses, future changes in income tax law or variances between our actual and anticipated results of operations, we make certain judgments and estimates. Therefore, actual income taxes could materially vary from these estimates.

We account for uncertain tax positions based on a two-step process of evaluating recognition and measurement criteria. The first step assesses whether the tax position is more likely than not to be sustained upon examination by the tax authority, including resolution of any appeals or litigation, based on the technical merits of the position. If the tax position meets the more likely than not criteria, the portion of the tax benefit greater than 50% likely to be realized upon settlement with the tax authority is recognized in the financial statements. Interest related to uncertain tax positions are classified in the financial statements as a component of income tax expense. The ultimate resolution of these tax positions may be greater or less than the liabilities recorded.

Our share-based compensation relates to employee stock awards granted in connection with the trivago N.V. 2016 Incentive Plan.

Employee stock options primarily consist of service based awards, some of which also have market-based performance conditions. We measure the fair value of share options at the grant date or the modification date, if applicable, using the Black-Scholes option pricing model and the fair value of awards containing market-based conditions using a Monte Carlo simulation model. These models incorporate various assumptions including expected volatility of equity, expected term, and risk-free interest rate. We amortize the fair value over the vesting term on a straight-line basis, and for awards with market-based conditions, over the service period using the accelerated method. If any of the assumptions used in the model change significantly for future grant valuations or modification events, share-based compensation expense may differ materially in the future from that recorded in the current period.

The following table summarizes our contractual obligations as of December 31, 2023:

			Payments due by period
(in millions)			Total			Short-term			Long-term
Operating leases, including imputed interest (1)			€	51.5		€	3.7		€	47.8
Finance lease obligations			0.2			0.1			0.1
Purchase obligations(2)			26.8			14.5			12.3
Total (3)			€78.5			€18.3			€60.2

We report Adjusted EBITDA as a supplemental measure to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("GAAP"). We define Adjusted EBITDA as net income/(loss) adjusted for:

•income/(loss) from equity method investment,

•expense/(benefit) for income taxes,

•total other (income)/expense, net,

•depreciation of property and equipment and amortization of intangible assets,

•impairment of, and gains and losses on disposals of, property and equipment,

•impairment of intangible assets and goodwill,

•share-based compensation, and

•certain other items, including restructuring, ADS cancellation fees, significant legal settlements and court-ordered penalties, such as the penalty imposed by the Australian Federal Court in the proceeding brought by the ACCC against us.

From time to time, we may exclude from Adjusted EBITDA the impact of certain items that affect the period-to-period comparability of our operating performance.

Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure. A “non-GAAP financial measure” refers to a numerical measure of a company’s historical or future financial performance, financial position, or cash flows that excludes (or includes) amounts that are included in (or excluded from) the most directly comparable measure calculated and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP in such company’s financial statements. We present this non-GAAP financial measure because it is used by management to evaluate our operating performance, formulate business plans, and make strategic decisions on capital allocation. We also believe that this non-GAAP financial measure provides useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating performance and consolidated results of operations in the same manner as our management, and the exclusion of certain expenses in calculating Adjusted EBITDA can provide a useful measure in comparing financial results between periods as these costs may vary independent of core business performance.

Our use of Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results reported in accordance with U.S. GAAP, including net income/loss. Some of these limitations are:

•Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect our cash expenditures or future requirements for capital expenditures or contractual commitments;

•Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, our working capital needs;

•Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect expenses, such as restructuring and other related reorganization costs;

•Although depreciation, amortization and impairments are non-cash charges, the assets being depreciated, amortized or impaired may have to be replaced in the future, and Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect cash capital expenditure requirements for such replacements or for new capital expenditure requirements; and

•Other companies, including companies in our own industry, may calculate Adjusted EBITDA differently than we do, limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure.

We periodically provide an Adjusted EBITDA outlook however, we are not able to provide a reconciliation of our Adjusted EBITDA outlook to net income/(loss), the comparable GAAP measure, because certain items that are excluded from Adjusted EBITDA cannot be reasonably predicted or are not in our control. In particular, we are unable to forecast the timing or magnitude of share-based compensation, interest, taxes, impairments, restructuring related costs and/or significant legal settlements and court-ordered penalties without unreasonable efforts, and these items could significantly impact, either individually or in the aggregate, net income/(loss) in the future.

The below table presents a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income/(loss), the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure.

(1) The €0.5 million presented within the certain other items line in the tabular reconciliation for the year ended December 31, 2023 is attributable to the ADS cancellation fees incurred in connection with our equity restructuring completed in the fourth quarter of 2023. As the equity restructuring was a result of the payment of a one-time extraordinary dividend, these fees were excluded when calculating Adjusted EBITDA in 2023.

(2) The €20.7 million presented within the certain other items line in the tabular reconciliation for the year ended December 31, 2022 is attributable to the ACCC penalty and costs imposed on us in the judgement by the Australian Federal Court in the proceeding brought by the ACCC. Due to the size and unusual nature of the expenses relating to the judgement of the Australian Federal Court and its distorting effect on the understanding of our underlying business developments, it is also excluded when calculating Adjusted EBITDA. Of the AUD 44.7 million penalty assessed by the Australian Federal Court, a portion was accrued for over multiple accounting periods prior to the change in Adjusted EBITDA definition which took place in the first quarter of 2020. As a result, a portion of the penalty net of foreign exchange was presented within Adjusted EBITDA in prior periods. See "Note 13 - Commitments and contingencies" in the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report for further details.

The following tables present information about our senior management and our supervisory board members including their ages and position as of the date of this annual report. The current business addresses for the members of our management and supervisory boards is c/o trivago N.V., Kesselstraße 5 - 7, 40221 Düsseldorf, Germany.

The following paragraphs set forth biographical information regarding our management board members as well as our chief financial officer.

Johannes Thomas currently serves as a managing director and chief executive officer. Prior to joining trivago, Mr. Thomas was Managing Director of ColQ.capital an investment fund that leverages collective intelligence to make investment decisions. Prior to joining ColQ, he was Managing Director and Chief Revenue Officer at trivago. Mr. Thomas joined us in 2011 to build up the Performance Marketing Department and then steered the path of the advertiser relations unit. Mr. Thomas also headed up the Business Operations and Strategy Department, which was responsible for running strategic projects and acquisitions within trivago for several years.

Jasmine Ezz currently serves as managing director and chief marketing officer. Prior to her return to trivago in 2023, she served as co-founder and Managing Director of Grid GmbH, an event and nightlife app, which allowed users to buy tickets, order in-app and pay on a cashless basis. From 2014 to 2020, she held various positions at trivago, most recently as Head of Media Buying. Ms. Ezz holds a master’s degree in international management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and a bachelor’s degree in international business from Maastricht University.

Andrej Lehnert currently serves as managing director and chief product officer. Prior to his return to trivago in 2023, Mr. Lehnert served as Managing Director of CoIQ.capital, an investment fund that leverages collective intelligence to make investment decisions. Prior to joining CoIQ in 2020, he most recently served as Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer of trivago, which he initially joined in 2011. Before that, Mr. Lehnert led his own Internet venture from 2008 to 2011, after having been with the William Wrigley Jr. Company from 2001 to 2008, in the role of Director, Global Market Intelligence. Mr. Lehnert holds a degree of business administration from University Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Kevin Hu currently serves as our interim chief financial officer and leads the finance team as Head of Finance. He joined our financial reporting team in 2017 and later led the team as Head of Financial Reporting. Prior to joining us, he worked as a Chartered Professional Accountant for KPMG. Mr. Hu holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a major in accounting from Simon Fraser University.

•On May 9, 2023 Axel Hefer resigned as chief executive officer and managing director. On the same day, the supervisory board designated Johannes Thomas as temporary member of the management board and as chief executive officer.

•On June 30, 2023, Johannes Thomas, Andrej Lehnert and Jasmine Ezz were appointed as managing directors at our annual general meeting of shareholders with a term expiring at our annual general meeting of shareholders to be held in 2027.

•On June 30, 2023, Matthias Tillmann was re-appointed as managing director and chief financial officer at our annual general meeting of shareholders with a term expiring at our annual general meeting of shareholders to be held in 2024. On December 31, 2023, Matthias Tillmann resigned as managing director and chief financial officer.

•The Supervisory Board appointed Kevin Hu, our head of finance, as interim chief financial officer for a period from January 1 to March 31, 2024.

•With an effective date of April 1, 2024, the Supervisory Board has designated Robin Harries as temporary member of the management board and chief financial officer, pending his appointment at our annual general meeting of shareholders.

The following is a brief summary of the business experience of our supervisory board members.

Joana Breidenbach is an internet entrepreneur, author and anthropologist. She is a member of the supervisory board of gut.org gAG, co-founder of the donation platform betterplace.org and founder of the think tank betterplace lab. Ms. Breidenbach holds a PhD degree from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.

Robert J. Dzielak has served as Expedia Group’s Chief Legal Officer and Secretary since March 2018, previously serving as its Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary since April 2012. Mr. Dzielak had previously served as Senior Vice President and acting General Counsel since October 2011. Since joining the Expedia Group as Assistant General Counsel in April 2006 and through his service as Vice President and Associate General Counsel between February 2007 and October 2011, Mr. Dzielak held primary responsibility for the worldwide litigation portfolio of Expedia Group and its brands. Prior to joining Expedia Group, Mr. Dzielak was a partner at the law firm of Preston, Gates and Ellis, LLP (now K&L Gates LLP), where his practice focused on commercial and intellectual property litigation. Mr. Dzielak received his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School.

Eric M. Hart currently serves as chairman of the supervisory board of trivago. Since October 2023 he served as Chief Financial Officer of Plaid. Mr. Hart previously served as the Chief Financial Officer of Expedia Group from April 2020 until October 2022, overseeing Expedia Group’s accounting, financial reporting and analysis, investor relations, treasury, internal audit, tax, and real estate teams. Mr. Hart served as acting Chief Financial Officer of Expedia Group after the departure of the former Chief Financial Officer in December of 2019.

Mr. Hart also served as Expedia Group’s Chief Strategy Officer with responsibility for Expedia Group's strategy and business development, as well as global M&A and investments. Prior to assuming the Chief Strategy Officer position, Mr. Hart served as the General Manager of Expedia Group’s CarRentals.com brand for nearly three years. Prior to that, he oversaw corporate strategy for the Expedia Group, leading some of Expedia Group’s largest acquisitions. Before joining Expedia Group, Mr. Hart spent time as a Vice President at Lake Capital, as a Project Leader at Boston Consulting Group, and as a Consultant at Accenture. Mr. Hart holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgia State University and a Master’s in Business Administration from University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Peter M. Kern has been a director of Expedia Group since 2005, has served as Vice Chairman of Expedia Group since June 2018, and has served as Chief Executive Officer of Expedia Group since April 2020. Mr. Kern served on the board of directors of Tribune Media Company from October 2016 through the completion of Tribune Media’s merger with Nextstar Media Group, Inc. in 2019, and served as Tribune Media’s Chief Executive Officer from 2017 through 2019. Mr. Kern also served as a Managing Partner of InterMedia Partners VII, LP, a private equity firm, from 2005 through 2023. Prior to joining InterMedia, Mr. Kern was Senior Managing Director and Principal of Alpine Capital LLC. Prior to Alpine Capital, Mr. Kern founded Gemini Associates in 1996 and served as President from its inception through its merger with Alpine Capital in 2001. Prior to founding Gemini Associates, Mr. Kern was at the Home Shopping Network and Whittle Communications. Mr. Kern also served as the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of trivago N.V. from 2016 through 2022, and as Chairman of the board of directors of Hemisphere Media Group, Inc., a publicly-traded Spanish-language media company, from 2019 through 2022. Mr. Kern holds a B.S. degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Hiren Mankodi currently serves as Managing Director for Charlesbank Capital Partners, leading the firm’s technology investing efforts. Previously he was a co-founding partner at Pamplona TMT, a private equity firm focusing on the technology, media and telecom private equity sector. Prior to that, he was a Managing Director at Audax Private Equity where he led the firm’s technology investing efforts. He has over 20 years of private equity and venture capital investing experience, including investments in the enterprise software, infrastructure software, digital media, healthcare IT, technology-enabled services, and industrial technology sectors.

Mieke De Schepper currently serves as Chief Commercial Officer of Trustpilot. She previously served as Executive Vice President, Online Travel and Managing Director Asia Pacific, Amadeus IT Group until April 2022. Before Amadeus, Mieke worked for Expedia Group, where she held the role of Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Egencia and as Vice President of Expedia Group’s Lodging Partner Solutions Asia Pacific. Prior to Expedia Group, she spent 10 years with Phillips Electronics having held various global, regional and local leadership roles in product, marketing and sales. She started her professional career with McKinsey. Mieke serves as a member of the Supervisory board of trivago N.V. and JustEat Takeaway.com N.V. Mieke holds an MBA from INSEAD and an MSc in Industrial Design Engineering from the Delft University of Technology.

Niklas Östberg is the co-founder of Delivery Hero SE and has served as its Chief Executive Officer since May 2011. He also served as director of the board until its public offering in July 2017. Prior to this, Mr. Östberg was co-founder and chairman of the board of Online Pizza Norden AB from 2008 and May 2011. Mr. Östberg holds a Master's degree from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Rolf Schrömgens is the co-founder of leadership.sprouts, an organization that aims to evolve leadership into the digital age. He also is the co-founder of brafe.space, a movement to create a space for entrepreneurs and activists to evolve themselves and their organizations. Until the end of 2019, Mr. Schrömgens was Chief Executive Officer of trivago. He was previously a member of our supervisory board in 2020 and 2021. Prior to founding trivago GmbH, Mr. Schrömgens was founder and VP at ciao.com, a consumer review website, from 1999 to 2001. Mr. Schrömgens holds a diploma in management from Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL).

Members of our supervisory board and members of our management board have been appointed pursuant to the terms of Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement. See “Item 6: Directors, senior management and employees - C. Board practices” and “Item 7: Major shareholders and related party transactions - B. Related party transactions”.

•On June 30, 2023, Rolf Schrömgens - following a binding nomination of our supervisory board - was appointed as supervisory director for a period expiring at our annual general meeting of shareholders to be held in 2026.

The following chart summarizes certain self-identified personal characteristics of our directors, in accordance with Nasdaq listing Rule 5605(f) and was provided by the members of our supervisory board members on a voluntary basis.

The amount of compensation, including benefits in kind, accrued or paid to our management board members with respect to their service on the management board in the year ended December 31, 2023 is described in the tables below.

Our management board earned the following cash compensation with respect to their service as members of the management board during the fiscal year 2023:

Consistent with prior year, the cash compensation does not contain a cash bonus portion. As of December 31, 2023, we had nothing set aside or accrued to provide pension, retirement or similar benefits to our management board members.

In 2023, Mr. Tillmann exercised options at a strike price of €0.06 to receive 671,503 Class A shares (converted to ADSs at the appropriate ratio). Of this amount, 607,931 were subsequently sold pursuant to a trading plan established pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 of the Exchange Act.

Our management board held the following Class A share options (both vested and unvested) during the fiscal year 2023 for which there were remaining options outstanding as of December 31, 2023:

The amount of compensation, including benefits in kind, accrued or paid to our supervisory board members with respect to the year ended December 31, 2023 is described in the tables below. Our supervisory board received the following cash compensation with respect to service in the fiscal year 2023:

Mr. Dzielak, Mr. Kern and Mr. Schrömgens were not provided with any cash or equity compensation for their service on our supervisory board for the year ended December 31, 2023. On September 14, 2022, the supervisory board approved annual cash compensation of €250,000 for Eric Hart, followed by the approval of the payment of this amount during our annual general meeting of shareholders on June 30, 2023.

Our supervisory board held the following Class A share options and/or restricted stock units (RSUs) (both vested and unvested) during the fiscal year 2023 for which there were remaining options and/or RSUs outstanding as of December 31, 2023:

As of December 31, 2023, we had nothing set aside or accrued to provide pension, retirement or similar benefits to our supervisory board members.

In 2023, Ms. De Schepper and Ms. Breidenbach exercised options at a strike price of €0.06 to receive 83,625 and 51,870 Class A shares, respectively, which were converted to ADSs at the appropriate ratio. In 2023, Mr. Kern and Mr. Mankodi received vested RSUs of 1,535 and 12,935, respectively, representing Class A shares that were converted to ADSs at the appropriate ratio.

In connection with our IPO, we established the trivago N.V. 2016 Omnibus Incentive Plan, which we refer to as the 2016 Plan, with the purpose of giving us a competitive advantage in attracting, retaining and motivating officers, employees, management board members, supervisory board members, and/or consultants by providing them incentives directly linked to shareholder value. The maximum number of Class A shares available for issuance under the 2016 Plan is 59,635,698 Class A shares, which does not include any Class B share conversions. Class A shares issuable under the 2016 Plan will be represented by ADSs for such Class A shares. The 2016 Plan was amended on March 6, 2017 to permit the delegation of certain responsibilities to the management board. The Plan was amended on August 3, 2017 to permit supervisory board members to be eligible for awards under the 2016 Plan. The 2016 Plan was amended on June 28, 2019 to permit the granting to management and supervisory board members an option to purchase Class A shares at less than fair market value of the underlying Class A shares. The 2016 Plan was also amended on July 18, 2019 to permit additional mechanics to settle transactions. On June 30, 2020, at our general meeting, our shareholders authorized an increase of the maximum number of Class A shares available for issuance under the 2016 Plan. On March 2, 2021, our supervisory board amended the 2016 Plan to reflect this increase. The 2016 Plan was then amended on May 23, 2023 to allow for the granting of "incentive stock options" within the meaning of U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.

Awards include options, performance-based stock options, share appreciation rights, restricted stock units, performance-based stock units and other share-based and cash-based awards. Awards may be settled in stock or cash. The option exercise price for options under the 2016 Plan can be less than the fair market value of a Class A share as defined in the 2016 Plan on the relevant grant date. To the extent that listing standards of the applicable exchange require the company’s shareholders to approve any repricing of options, options may not be repriced without shareholder approval.

Options and share appreciation rights shall vest and become exercisable at such time and pursuant to such conditions as determined by the plan committee and as may be specified in an individual grant agreement. The plan committee may at any time accelerate the exercisability of any option or share appreciation right. Restricted shares may vest based on continued service, attainment of performance goals or both continued service and performance goals. The plan committee at any time may waive any of these vesting conditions.

Options and share appreciation rights will have a term of not more than ten years. The 2016 Plan will also have a ten year term, although awards outstanding on the date the 2016 Plan terminates will not be affected by the termination of the 2016 Plan.

The primary objective of our senior management’s compensation program is to attract, motivate, reward and retain the managerial talent needed to achieve our business objectives and drive sustainable business performance. We have mandated an external compensation specialist to benchmark our management’s compensation, both in terms of their base cash compensation, cash bonus and equity incentive award, against that of the management of similarly situated companies in the United States and Europe including companies with a similar financial profile or those in the same sector (e.g., technology and online travel).

Guided by market research provided by the compensation specialist, we slightly decreased the base salary of our management joining in 2023 and provided equity awards that vest over a longer period of time and have a strong performance element. For Mr. Tillmann, we increased the base salary in order to incentivize retention.

For more information on the 2023 performance grants, see “Item 6: Directors, senior management and employees - B. Compensation - Compensation of members of our management board and supervisory board " above. The cash and any bonus payments and any equity award compensation are proposed by the CEO to our compensation committee. The proposal is then discussed (and amended, if needed) by the committee. The amount of compensation of the management board and those executives reporting to the CEO is then determined at the discretion of our supervisory board.

We believe in cultivating an inspiring environment where our employees can thrive and feel empowered to do their best. Our aim is to attract intrinsically motivated individuals, and nurture and retain the most capable and driven of them to support our culture of learning, authenticity and entrepreneurship.

Our remuneration policy is designed to attract and retain employees, and reward them for achieving our goals and objectives as a business, and working productively together in line with our corporate culture.

We use an individualized approach to compensation that reflects the value contribution of each employee to our organization. We believe that employees who contribute significantly to our success should receive increased compensation and measures should be taken to retain them, for example through the award of equity. The unique context of the position profile - in particular in relation to similar roles both at trivago and externally - as well as the scope of responsibilities taken on by that employee are other important factors for the development of employee compensation.

Salaried employees are rewarded on a total rewards basis, which includes fixed income and may include performance awards, such as cash bonus payments or restricted stock units. Compensation is awarded on a fixed rather than variable basis in order to emphasize intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) motivation. We aim to ensure that each employee’s compensation is fair and is aligned to the scope and breadth of his or her activities as well as to the value that person creates. At trivago, we generally review our compensation decisions on a yearly basis. Additionally, we adopted an approach to enable a more fluid adjustment of compensation for employees who have been promoted or have had a significant increase in their scope of work. We believe that fairness is created by analyzing compensation at one point in time for all our employees. Rather than negotiating salary increases, we aim to run a fair, objective and merit-based process for compensation decisions.

We have a two-tier board structure consisting of our management board (bestuur) and a separate supervisory board (raad van commissarissen). Each management board and supervisory board member owes a duty to us to properly perform the duties assigned to him or her and to act in our corporate interest. Under Dutch law, the corporate interest extends to the interests of all corporate stakeholders, such as shareholders, creditors, employees, customers and suppliers.

Our management board is responsible for the day-to-day management of our company, subject to certain limitations as set out in the articles of association and the internal rules of our management board (which we refer to as the Management Board Rules), and for our strategy, policy and operations under the supervision of our supervisory board.

Our management board is required to keep our supervisory board informed, and to consult with our supervisory board, on important matters and to submit certain important decisions to our supervisory board for its approval as set out below. Except as agreed in our annual business plan, which is subject to the approval of our supervisory board, prior to entering into the following transactions or making the following decisions with respect to the company or any subsidiary, our management board shall obtain the prior consent of the supervisory board:

1.purchase, sale, transfer, lease (as lessor or in respect of real property) or other acquisition or disposition of assets (including equity interests in a subsidiary, except to the extent disposed to a wholly owned subsidiary) other than such purchases, sales, transfers, leases or other dispositions or acquisitions with a value for accounting purposes of less than $10,000,000. Prior notice of such purchases, sales, transfers, leases or other dispositions or acquisitions shall be provided to Expedia Group and such purchase, sale, transfer, lease or other disposition or acquisition shall only be consummated if it would be permitted under Expedia Group’s credit facilities or other debt instruments; or any merger of, or sale of all or substantially all of the assets of, any subsidiary (except for a merger with or sale to another subsidiary);

2.liquidating or dissolving the company or any subsidiary;

3.granting loans, payment guarantees (Bürgschaften), indemnities, or incurring other liabilities to third parties outside the ordinary course of business in excess of €10,000,000;

4.taking out loans, borrowings or other debt (or providing any guarantee of such obligations of any other person or entity) or granting any liens other than liens securing the foregoing, which permitted debt and liens at any time outstanding exceed €10,000,000;

5.entering into joint-venture, partnership and/or similar agreements (i) which cannot be terminated without penalty within five years or (ii) of significant value that concern a material change to the identity or the character of the Company or the business;

6.entering into non-compete or exclusivity agreements or other agreements that restrict the freedom of the business and which agreements are terminable later than two years after having been entered into;

7.entering into agreements (i) which cannot be terminated without penalty within (a) five years involving an annual commitment in excess of €10,000,000 or (ii) for annual commitment in excess of €10,000,000 or a total commitment in excess of €20,000,000, save that the threshold for annual commitments for brand marketing shall be €50,000,000;

8.entering into agreements under which we or any subsidiary binds or purports to bind any of our shareholders or our shareholders’ affiliates (other than our subsidiaries) or to cause such shareholders or affiliates to take or forbear from taking action;

9.entering into, amending or terminating agreements between us (or any subsidiary) and any managing director of the company or any subsidiary, any companies affiliated with such managing director, or third parties represented by such managing director;

10.entering into or amending any agreements or other arrangements with any third party that restrict in any fashion the ability of the company (or any subsidiary), which ability shall be subject to the terms of the Management Board Rules (a) to pay dividends or other distributions with respect to any shares in the capital of the company (or any subsidiary) or (b) to make or repay loans or advances to, or guarantee debt of, any of the company’s shareholders or such shareholders subsidiaries;

11.entering into, amending or terminating domination agreements (Beherrschungsverträge), profit and loss pooling agreements (Gewinnabführungsverträge), business leasing contracts (Unternehmenspachtverträge) or tax units (Organschaften);

12.entering into any transaction with any affiliate or shareholder of the company which is outside the ordinary course of business and not at arms’ length terms;

13.issuing shares in the capital of the company or any subsidiary (including phantom stock and profit participation rights) or granting options (including phantom options) or subscription rights for shares of the company or any subsidiary, except pursuant to the company’s 2016 Plan;

14.share repurchases by the company or any subsidiary (other than in connection with conversion of Class B shares into Class A shares);

15.amendments, modifications or waivers to, or the exercise of any rights under, any stock option, phantom option or similar program of the company or any subsidiary, except to the extent provided in the 2016 Plan;

16.making changes to regulatory or tax status or classification of the company or any subsidiary;

17.change of material accounting standards not required by applicable law or Dutch or U.S. GAAP policy;

18.entering into, amending or terminating employment contracts with any managing director of the company;

19.entering into any collective bargaining agreements (Tarifverträge); and

20.initiating or settling material litigation in excess of €1,000,000.

The management board shall, in due course at least 30 days before the end of each fiscal year of the company, prepare and submit to the supervisory board an annual business plan for the following fiscal year. The annual business plan shall become effective upon the approval of the supervisory board, and the annual business plan may be amended by the management board by a quarterly plan with the consent of the supervisory board. The annual business plan will address, in reasonable detail, any anticipated transactions of the type described in Item 1 above. The fiscal year of the company is the calendar year.

If, at the beginning of a fiscal year, no new annual business plan is in effect because the supervisory board did not approve the annual business plan submitted by the management board or the management board did not submit an annual business plan as and when required under the management board rules, the annual business plan for the previous business year shall stay in effect until such time when the supervisory board approves a new annual business plan for the running fiscal year, provided that the target figures for revenue and Adjusted EBITDA shall increase by 15% to the previous annual business plan and expense items shall be adjusted accordingly.

Pursuant to the internal rules of our management board (which we refer to as Management Board Rules), our management board must consist of two to six members, including the CEO and the CFO.

Under our articles of association, the supervisory board may designate any managing director as CEO, CFO or as any other officer of the company, with such duties and responsibilities as determined by the management board. The supervisory board may revoke or change the officer title assigned to any managing director, provided that the managing director concerned will subsequently continue his term of office as a managing director without having such officer title.

Our management board members were appointed by our general meeting of shareholders upon the binding nomination by the supervisory board. Under Dutch law, a management board member may, subject to compliance with certain Dutch statutory procedures, be removed with or without cause by a resolution passed by a majority of at least a two thirds of the votes cast by those present in person or by proxy at a meeting and who are entitled to vote, provided such majority represents more than half of the issued share capital, unless the proposal was made by the supervisory board in which case a simple majority of the votes cast is sufficient.

Our supervisory board is responsible for supervising the conduct of and providing advice to our management board and for supervising our business generally, subject to our articles of association and the internal rules of our supervisory board (which we refer to as Supervisory Board Rules). Our supervisory board also has the authority to, at its own initiative, provide our management board with advice and may request any information from our management board that it deems appropriate. In performing its duties, our supervisory board is required to take into account the interests of our business as a whole.

Our supervisory board is comprised of eight members. Pursuant to the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement, four supervisory board members were selected by Expedia Group, three supervisory board members were selected by the Founders, and one was nominated by the supervisory board in accordance with our articles of association. Each supervisory board member was appointed for a term of three years. On November 1, 2022, we agreed to purchase from Peter Vinnemeier, one of our Founders, 20,000,000 Class A shares, representing 5.5% of our total common shares outstanding, for an aggregate price of €19.3 million (USD 20.0 million). The transaction closed on November 9, 2022, at which time the Founders shareholdings fell below the 15% "Percentage Interest" threshold in the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement required for supervisory board nominations by the Founders. As a result, the Founders are no longer entitled to designate members of our supervisory board for binding nomination. As of the date hereof, the three supervisory board members who had been selected by the Founders continue to serve in that capacity.

Our current supervisory board members were appointed at our general meetings of shareholders upon the binding nomination by our supervisory board. A supervisory board member may, subject to compliance with certain Dutch statutory procedures, be removed with or without cause by a shareholder resolution passed by a majority of at least a two thirds of the votes cast by those present in person or by proxy at a meeting and who are entitled to vote, provided such majority represents more than half of the issued share capital, unless the proposal was made by the supervisory board in which case a simple majority of the votes cast is sufficient.

We have entered into services agreements with each of the members of our management board. These agreements contain customary provisions regarding noncompetition, nonsolicitation, confidentiality of information and assignment of inventions. We have also entered into agreements governing our management board's equity grants. The terms of the agreements are described above under "Compensation of members of our management board and supervisory board ". The form of stock option summary of award including time-based stock options and performance stock options is also filed as exhibit hereto. The stock option summary of awards was executed on May 9, 2023. The strike price of $1.50 awarded in the award agreements was decreased by the per-share amount of the one-time extraordinary dividend paid in November 2023, converted into U.S. dollars, as applied by the depositary for distribution of the dividend to the American Depositary Share holders, rounded to the next cent. The award agreements include a "double trigger" change of control provision.

Upon any participant's termination of employment, during the two-year period following a Change in Control (as defined in the agreement), for a Qualified Termination Reason (as defined in the agreement and below), depending on the time indicated in the award, (i) the amount of stock option that would have vested and become exercisable at the end of the first anniversary of the Grant Date (as defined in the agreement) shall vest and become exercisable; or (ii) the amount of stock option that will vest and become exercisable will equal the sum of (a) a pro rata amount of the outstanding stock option, and (b) 50% of the amount of the stock option that does not vest and become exercisable pursuant to subclause (a); or if a Change of Control occurs prior to the Measurement Date (as defined in the agreement) with respect to the performance stock options, the Adjusted Share Price (as defined in the agreement) shall equal the price per share paid as consideration with such Change of Control.

A "Qualified Termination Reason" means a material reduction in the relevant management board member’s rate of total compensation from the rate of total compensation in effect for such management board member immediately prior to the Change in Control; or a relocation of the management board member’s principal place of employment more than 50 kilometers outside of Düsseldorf; or a reduction in the management board member’s title, duties or reporting responsibilities or level of responsibilities from those in effect immediately prior to the Change in Control; or our material breach of any material provision of applicable equity compensation agreements.

In order to invoke a termination of employment for a Qualified Termination Reason for any reason, the participant must provide us with written notice of the existence of one or more of the conditions described above within 90 days following the participant’s knowledge of the initial existence of such condition or conditions, and we will have 30 days following receipt of such written notice (the “Cure Period”) during which we may remedy the condition. In the event that we fail to remedy the condition constituting a Qualified Termination Reason during the Cure Period, the participant must terminate employment, if at all, within 90 days following the Cure Period in order for such termination of employment to constitute a termination of employment for a Qualified Termination Reason.

We have entered into services agreements with each of the members of our supervisory board for an indefinite period of time, provided that the agreements will terminate upon dismissal, resignation or expiry of term of office (subject to reappointment) of the supervisory board member concerned. These agreements provide for the compensation awarded to the independent supervisory board members.

Our Supervisory Board and annual general meeting of shareholders approved an annual cash compensation amount of €250,000 and an equity grant to Mr. Hart of 1,000,000 options that are subject to a "single trigger" change of control provision. The strike price of $1.52 was decreased by the per-share amount of the one-time extraordinary dividend paid in November 2023, converted into U.S. dollars, as applied by the depositary for distribution of the dividend to the American Depositary Share holders, rounded to the next cent. The stock option award provides that the stock option outstanding as of such Change of Control will be fully exercisable and vested and shall remain exercisable for a period of time indicated in the award.

As a foreign private issuer under the SEC rules, we are not required to have independent directors on our supervisory board, except to the extent that our Audit Committee is required to consist exclusively of independent supervisory board members. Our supervisory board has determined that, under current Nasdaq listing standards regarding independence, and taking into account any applicable committee standards, Ms. Breidenbach, Mr. Mankodi, Ms. De Schepper and Mr. Östberg would be considered independent supervisory board members.

Under the independence criteria of the DCGC (which among other items, requires that more than half of the members of our supervisory board qualify as independent), Ms. Breidenbach, Mr. Mankodi, Ms. De Schepper and Mr. Östberg are considered independent supervisory board members. See “Item 16G.     Corporate governance.”

Our supervisory board has established an audit committee and a compensation committee.

The audit committee currently consists of Mr. Mankodi, Ms. De Schepper and Mr. Östberg and assists the supervisory board in overseeing our accounting and financial reporting processes and the audits of our financial statements. Mr. Mankodi serves as chairman of the committee. The audit committee consists exclusively of members of our supervisory board who are financially literate, and Mr. Mankodi (i) is considered an “audit committee financial expert” as defined by the SEC and (ii) qualifies as independent, as recommended by the DCGC. Our supervisory board has made an affirmative determination that each of our audit committee members is independent under Nasdaq rules and Rule 10A-3 of the Exchange Act. The audit committee is governed by a charter that complies with Nasdaq rules.

The audit committee is responsible for:

•the appointment, compensation, retention and oversight of the work of, and the relationship with, the independent registered public accounting firm;

•the appointment, compensation, retention and oversight of any accounting firm engaged for the purpose of preparing or issuing an audit report or performing other audit services;

•pre-approving the audit services and non-audit services to be provided by our independent auditor before the auditor is engaged to render such services;

•evaluating the independent auditor’s qualifications, performance and independence, and presenting its conclusions to the full supervisory board on at least an annual basis;

•reviewing and discussing with the management board and the independent auditor our annual audited financial statements and quarterly financial statements prior to the filing of the respective annual and quarterly reports;

•reviewing our compliance with laws and regulations, including major legal and regulatory initiatives and also reviewing any major litigation or investigations against us that may have a material impact on our financial statements; and

•approving or ratifying any related person transaction (as defined in our related person transaction policy) in accordance with our related person transaction policy.

The audit committee will meet as often as one or more members of the audit committee deem necessary, but in any event will meet at least four times per year. The audit committee will meet at least once per year with our independent accountant, without members of our management board being present.

The compensation committee currently consists of Mr. Dzielak and Mr. Hart, and assists the supervisory board in determining the compensation of the management board and the supervisory board, in accordance with the remuneration policy that has been determined by the general meeting of shareholders. Mr. Dzielak serves as chairman of the committee. Under SEC and Nasdaq rules, there are heightened independence standards for members of the compensation committee, including a prohibition against the receipt of any compensation from us other than standard supervisory board member compensation. Pursuant to exemptions from such independence standards as a result of being a controlled company, the members of our compensation committee may not be independent under such standards.

The compensation committee is responsible for:

•recommending each managing director’s compensation to the supervisory board and recommending to the supervisory board regarding compensation for supervisory board members;

•identifying, reviewing and approving corporate goals and objectives relevant to management and supervisory board compensation;

•reviewing and approving or making recommendations regarding our incentive compensation and equity-based plans and arrangements;

•reviewing and discussing with management the compensation disclosures to be included in filings and submissions with the SEC;

•preparing an annual compensation committee report; and

•reporting regularly to the supervisory board regarding its activities.

The overview of employees at the end of each respective period is summarized in the following table.

			Year ended December 31,
			2023						2022						2021
Cost of revenue			54						58						57
Selling and marketing			119						111						133
Technology and content			338						380						444
General and administrative			140						160						175
Total			651						709						809
thereof employed in Germany			644						698						800

None of our employees are covered under a collective bargaining agreement. We consider our employee relations to be good.

Not applicable. At no time during or after the last completed fiscal year were we required to prepare an accounting restatement that required recovery of erroneously awarded compensation pursuant to our Executive Officer Incentive Compensation Recovery Policy.

The following table sets forth information relating to the beneficial ownership of our shares as of February 26, 2024, by:

•each person, or group of affiliated persons, known by us to beneficially own 5% or more of our outstanding Class A shares and 5% or more of our outstanding Class B shares;

•each member of our management board and our supervisory board; and

•each member of our management board and our supervisory board as a group.

For further information regarding material transactions between us and principal shareholders, see “B. Related party transactions” below.

The number of shares (or share capital) beneficially owned by each entity, person, management board member and supervisory board member is determined in accordance with the rules of the SEC, and the information is not necessarily indicative of beneficial ownership for any other purpose. Under such rules, beneficial ownership includes any shares over which the individual has sole or shared voting power or investment power or from which the individual has the right to receive the economic benefit as well as any shares that the individual has the right to acquire within 60 days of February 26, 2024 through the exercise of any option, warrant or other right. Such shares are deemed outstanding for the purposes of computing the percentage ownership of the person holding such rights, but are not deemed outstanding for purposes of computing the percentage ownership of any other person, except with respect to the percentage ownership of all managing directors and supervisory board members as a group. Except as otherwise indicated, and subject to applicable community property laws, the persons named in the table have sole voting and investment power and the right to receive the economic benefit with respect to shares held by that person.

The following table is presented as of February 26, 2024. See “Item 4: Information on the company - C.    Organizational structure” for additional information regarding our corporate structure. Unless otherwise indicated below, the address for each beneficial owner listed is c/o trivago N.V., Kesselstraße 5 - 7, 40221 Düsseldorf, Germany.

On February 7, 2019, the parties thereto amended the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement to reflect the change in number of members of the management board and the number of members of the Compensation Committee. On May 18, 2022, the parties entered into a third amendment of the Amended and Restated Shareholders' Agreement, whereby the parties agreed to lower the minimum number of management board members to two.

On November 1, 2022, we agreed to purchase from Peter Vinnemeier, one of our Founders, 20,000,000 Class A shares, representing 5.5% of our total common shares outstanding, for an aggregate price of €19.3 million (USD 20.0 million). The transaction closed on November 9, 2022, at which time, the Founders and their affiliates collectively held less than 15% of the total number outstanding of Class A and Class B shares (the “15% threshold”), including any securities convertible into or exchangeable for, or any option, warrant, or other right to purchase or otherwise acquire, any Class A or Class B share (calculated as if all such securities had been converted, exercised or exchanged), and as a result, the rights and obligations of the Founders under the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement terminated, including the right to designate members of our supervisory board for binding nomination. Pursuant to the terms of the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement, certain provisions in the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement, including certain restrictive covenants, registration rights and transfer restrictions, continue to apply to the Founders.

On November 14, 2022, the parties also executed a joinder, whereby ELPS ultimately transferred its shares to Expedia, Inc., thereby replacing ELPS as a party in the Amended and Restated Shareholders' Agreement.

The internal rules of our supervisory board (which we refer to as the "Supervisory Board Rules") provide that our supervisory board be comprised of seven members who will each serve for a three year term. In connection with the shareholdings of the Founders falling below the 15% threshold (see above), the Founders are no longer entitled to designate members of our supervisory board for binding nomination.

The Articles of Association, as well as the Supervisory Board Rules set forth agreements regarding the committees of the supervisory board and the rules of procedure. See “Item 6: Directors, senior management and employees - C. Board practices.”

Our supervisory board members were appointed by our shareholders acting at a general meeting of shareholders upon a binding nomination by the supervisory board as described in “Item 6: Directors, senior management and employees - C. Board practices.”

Pursuant to the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement, Expedia, Inc. and the Founders continue to have certain demand registration rights, short-form registration rights and piggyback registration rights in respect of any Class A shares and Class B shares, and related indemnification rights from the company, subject to customary restrictions and exceptions. All fees, costs and expenses of registrations, other than underwriting discounts and commissions, are expected to be borne by us.

The Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement also grants appropriate information rights to Expedia, Inc. and the Founders. Expedia, Inc. and the Founders also agreed in the Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement that certain resolutions of the general meeting of shareholders require the consent of one Founder. These information and consent rights terminated in respect of the Founders upon their shareholdings having fell below the 15% threshold (see above).

The Amended and Restated Shareholders’ Agreement provides certain restrictions on the transferability of the Class A shares and Class B shares held by Expedia, Inc. and the Founders, including prohibitions on transfers by the Founders to our competitors. The Founders have tag-along rights on transfers of Class A or Class B shares to certain specified parties, and based on certain conditions. Expedia, Inc. has the right to drag the Founders in connection with a sale of all of its Class A shares and Class B shares.

Expedia and the Founders agreed to grant each other a right of first offer on any transfers of Class A shares or Class B shares to a third party. These transfer restrictions continue to apply to the Founders after their shareholdings fell below the 15% threshold (see above).

On August 21/22, 2017, the Founders, ELPS, trivago GmbH, trivago N.V. and certain other Expedia Group parties entered into a contribution agreement with respect to potential tax liability arising out of the cross-border merger, which we refer to as the contribution agreement. Following our IPO, we requested binding tax rulings from the German tax authorities regarding the tax neutrality to trivago GmbH, trivago N.V. and the Founders of the cross-border merger. Under the rulings, the German tax authorities have taken the opinion that trivago GmbH is liable for an immaterial tax amount. Under the contribution agreement, ELPS undertook, subject to the occurrence of a final, non-appealable and unchangeable tax assessment notice issued to us, to make an informal immaterial capital contribution (informele kapitaalstorting) on the Class B shares in cash in the amount of any (a) German Corporate Income Tax (Körperschaftsteuer), (b) German solidarity surcharge (Solidaritätszuschlag) thereon, and (c) German Trade Tax (Gewerbesteuer) that would not be made in exchange for any shares issued by us. In accordance with the terms and conditions of the contribution agreement, we and ELPS acknowledged that this contribution would be treated as share premium (agio) attached to the Class B shares and that the amount of this contribution would be attributed to our share premium reserve (agioreserve) attached to the Class B shares. The parties to the contribution agreement agreed that this contribution by ELPS shall be treated as a tax neutral shareholder contribution (verdeckte Einlage) at the trivago N.V. level for corporate tax purposes to the greatest extent possible. If and to the extent that German tax authorities challenge the neutral treatment of the contribution amount at the trivago N.V. level for corporate tax purposes, ELPS will contribute to us, in addition to the contribution amount referenced above, such additional amount as is necessary to ensure that the net amount actually received by us (after taking into account the payment by us of corporate taxes imposed on the contribution amount and any additional amounts payable to us pursuant the requiring payment of such additional amounts) that equals the full amount that we would have received had no such corporate taxes been imposed on the contribution amount.

On May 1, 2013, we entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement, pursuant to which Expedia Group purchased certain computer hardware and software from us, and a Data Hosting Services Agreement, pursuant to which Expedia Group provides us with certain data hosting services relating to all of the servers we use that are located within the United States. Either party may terminate the Data Hosting Services Agreement upon 30 days prior written notice. We have not incurred material expenses under this agreement.

Effective January 1, 2023, we entered into a Management Services Agreement with Expedia, Inc., pursuant to which Expedia, Inc. agreed to provide us with certain services in connection with tax, accounting, finance, legal, operations, administrative and similarly related functions. Either party may terminate the Management Services Agreement upon 30 days prior notice.

Expenses incurred under these agreements have been disclosed in Note 14: Related party transactions.

As further described in Note 11: Stockholders' equity, a one-time extraordinary dividend totaling €184.4 million was distributed to Class A and Class B shareholders of record on November 3, 2023. Of the total amount, €110.6 million was distributed to Expedia Group based on their share ownership on the date of record.

We have commercial relationships with Expedia Group, Inc. and many of its affiliated brands, including Brand Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotwire, Wotif, Vrbo and ebookers. These are arrangements terminable at will or upon fourteen to thirty days prior notice by either party and on customary commercial terms that enable Expedia Group’s brands to advertise on our platform, and we receive payment for users we refer to them. In 2020, we and Expedia Partner Solutions ("EPS") entered into an additional agreement pursuant to which EPS powers our platform with a template (hotels.com for partners). Expedia Group and its brands' related party revenue represented 36%, 32%, and 25% of our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively.

See “Item 5: Operating and financial review and prospects” for additional information.

In November 2022, we purchased 20,000,000 Class A shares from Peter Vinnemeier, one of our founders, for €19.3 million (USD 1.00 per share). The purchase of shares was funded from available working capital. For more information see Note 11: Stockholders' equity to the audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this annual report. Following this share purchase, transactions with Mr. Vinnemeier are no longer related party transactions.

As further described in Note 11: Stockholders' equity, a one-time extraordinary dividend totaling €184.4 million was distributed to Class A and Class B shareholders of record on November 3, 2023. Of the total amount, €15.1 million has been distributed to Rolf Schrömgens based on his share ownership on the date of record.

On April 28, 2022, we entered into an investment for a 20.8% (15.5% fully-diluted by share options) ownership interest in UBIO Limited ("UBIO") for €5.9 million. UBIO is a software company that develops robotic automation technology. trivago has the ability to exercise significant influence over UBIO through our representation on UBIO's Board of Directors, where we hold one of five seats. trivago does not have any rights, obligations or any relationships with regards to the other investors of UBIO. Our investment in UBIO is accounted for as an equity method investment. For more information see "Note 3: Acquisitions and other investments" in the notes to the audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this annual report.

On November 28, 2022, we entered into a commercial arrangement with UBIO to increase the number of directly bookable rates available on our website for an initial term of 12 months. This agreement was terminated in the last quarter of 2023 by providing 90 days written notice ahead of the contract renewal date. Expenses incurred under these agreements have been disclosed in Note 14: Related party transactions.

Effective January 11, 2024, we entered into a new commercial agreement with UBIO Limited. See Note 17: Subsequent events for further details.

For a description of our agreements with our management board and supervisory board members, please see “Item 6: Directors, senior management and employees - C. Board practices - Management board member services agreements and performance equity grants” and “Item 6: Directors, senior management and employees - C. Board practices - Supervisory board member services agreements.”

We have entered into indemnification agreements with members of our management board and our supervisory board. Our articles of association require us to indemnify our management board members and supervisory board members to the fullest extent permitted by law.

See the financial statements beginning on page F-1.

From time to time, we may be involved in various claims and legal proceedings relating to claims 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.

On August 23, 2018, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or ACCC, instituted proceedings in the Australian Federal Court against us. The ACCC alleged a number of breaches of the Australian Consumer Law, or ACL, relating to certain advertisements in Australia concerning the hotel prices available on our Australian site, our Australian strike-through pricing practice and other aspects of the way offers for accommodation were displayed on our Australian website. The matter went to trial in September 2019, and on January 20, 2020, the Australian Federal Court issued a judgment finding that we had engaged in conduct in breach of the ACL. On March 4, 2020, we filed a notice of appeal at the Australian Federal Court appealing part of that judgment. On November 4, 2020, the Australian Federal Court dismissed trivago’s appeal. On October 18 and 19, 2021, the Australian Federal Court heard submissions from the parties in relation to relief. On April 22, 2022, the Australian Federal Court issued a judgment ordering us to pay a penalty of AUD 44.7 million. The court also ordered us to cover the ACCC's costs arising from the proceeding. The court also enjoined us from engaging in misleading conduct of the type found by the Australian Federal Court to be in contravention of the ACL. We paid the penalty balance of €29.6 million (AUD 44.7 million) in the second quarter of 2022 and costs arising from the proceedings. A portion of the penalty balance had been previously provided for over multiple accounting periods within accrued expenses and other current liabilities in our consolidated balance sheet.

Under Dutch law, we may only pay dividends to the extent that our shareholders’ equity (eigen vermogen) exceeds the sum of the paid-up and called-up share capital plus the reserves required to be maintained under Dutch law or by our articles of association (although we note that, presently, we are not required by our articles of association to maintain reserves in addition to those which we must maintain under Dutch law). Subject only to such restrictions, any future determination to pay dividends will be at the discretion of our management board. In making a determination to pay dividends, the management board must act in the interests of our company and its business, taking into account relevant interests of our shareholders and other factors that our management board considers relevant, including our results of operations, financial condition, and future prospects.

See "Note 17: Subsequent events" in the notes to the audited consolidated financial statements included in this annual report.