Trivago, the Expedia-controlled hotel metasearch site, has a new side hustle: panhandling for tips. You may or may not get the same rate as booking direct, and probably not the best rate compared to ‘non-public’ rates. So for the privilege of paying the same or more, and giving up hotel loyalty perks and points, they want you to kick in even more.
The immediate reaction on LinkedIn was, “I am not tipping a publicly traded company for syncing some data feeds to offer effectively nothing.”
Tipping is a strange American practice, shifting an employer’s payroll costs onto the customer. Companies pay their workers less when customers top off wages. Even still, this isn’t a barista pulling a double shift. This is a $250 million Expedia-controlled entity rattling a digital cup.
Expedia Wants You To Tip For… Terrible Service
Expedia already takes a cut from hotels, takes payments for placement, and famously provides customer service so bad it has practically become its own meme.
- The phones that never seem to answer, and the interminable hold times while unempowered agents speak to their own support desks only to give you inconsistent and unhelpful answers.
- The refunds that never process.
- The reservations that exist until you arrive at the hotel and find out they don’t.
Expedia is the company that can’t manage to deliver basic support, but now thinks it deserves a tip on top. This goes beyond just “tipflation.” It’s not new, though, it’s just at a new scale.
Smaller hotel booking sites have been hitting up customers for tips for the past three years.
It’s similar to airport self-service kiosks prompting for 20% gratuities when all you did was buy a pack of gum without talking to anyone, but at the same level of awful as the Seattle hotel that asked guests to tip the Hong Kong-based investment group that owned the property.
Trivago is 60% owned by Expedia Group. So when you hit that “tip” button, you’re not helping some frontline worker. You’re effectively tipping Barry Diller’s empire (one of the largest online travel conglomerates in the world) for being willing to sell you a room that comes at high margin for what’s usually the same price you’d pay anywhere else. You never leave your desk or living room, no person assists in the transaction.
Tipping used to be framed as rewarding service, it’s only recently turned into an explicit corporate panhandling scheme.
If Trivago wants a tip, here are mine:
- Stop pretending you’re a waiter
- Fix the disastrous customer service that your parent company has been infamous for
- And if you want more money, provide customers with a better product and better deal
Would you ever tip the website you booked your stay with?
tips? say thank you
@Gary – I’m with you.
I have a tip for you. Never use Expedia.
C’mon, “panhandling” is much too polite a term for this sort of behaviour. Let’s call it what it is and, although I’m calling a spade a spade, I’d never stoop to to doing it:
It’s e-begging, pure and simple.
Ms Expedia I always tip 50 bucks for all her hard work per reservation
She does so much for me
Assures the hotel can’t find the reservation @ Check in
Falsely hypes up hotel ratings to mislead me and lie its the lowest price
Makes certain I won’t receive an upgrade,breakfast or points due to her being a 3rd party site
Refuses to offer a refund as its always something I did wrong even if i could get through to one of their overseas robots
What more could a traveler ask for?
Please be sure to tip generously as if your life depends on it
She is more important than the vital vending machine prompts that asks me for tips
Would be happy to double or triple my tips if I knew it would go directly into the CEOs direct pocket
I have used Expedia a number of times for hotels and flights and have never had a problem. I used them in 2024 for an AirAsia round trip from PNH to DMK when the AirAsia site refused to take any of my credit cards. The Expedia site took the card I preferred to use without a problem. The flights themselves were without problems.
That’s not a tip. Words have meaning. This is just asking you if you want to pay more for the agreed upon service. The revenue from the tip is going to the same entity. Just call it an environmental justice fee and leftists eager for a dopamine hit will lap it up.
From their persepective – American are stupid, and will tip anyone and everything.
This doesnt cost anything, and any money generated is free revenue.
Why are you calling out a private business from trying to increase their revenue flow?
While disgusting, annoying, and discouraging my business, the only surprising thing about this is how rare it is. I’ll bet within a year, some e-commerce platform will have its chatbot begging for tips.
wow i didn’t know Expedia got its hands on trivago, they now own a lot of travel websites, what about antitrust ?