- Interns are often brushed off for being at the bottom of the totem pole, but at some companies, that role has become a part of the secret recipe for landing a gig in the C-suite. Trivago is part of a list of companies, including Nike, HP, and EY, that have promoted former coffee-fetchers to the top of the corporate ladder.
In the matter of a month during the pandemic, hotel search platform Trivago’s revenue forecast plummeted from $1 billion to virtually zero.
It was a “near-death experience” that resulted in a “deep winter” for the company, according to CEO Johannes Thomas. Actual revenue sank 70% to 249 million euros in 2020 from 839 million euros in 2019, the latter equivalent to about $940 million at the time.
But even as restrictions were lifted and travel surged back, Trivago still had not recovered—and thus it was time for a shake-up in the C-suite.
“After you have a near-death experience and three years of depression, you have a team that doesn’t believe anymore,” Thomas, who was brought in as CEO to turn the company around in 2023, tells Fortune.
But for Thomas and other executives, what’s notable about their experiences is not their most recent roles—it’s how they started their careers.
Thomas joined Trivago in 2011 as an intern working in online marketing, and he’s quietly assembled other former interns, including chief financial officer Wolf Schmuhl and chief marketing officer Jasmine Ezz. Thomas says having leaders who understand the business and its culture from the ground up are key to returning the company to its former glory.
And while Trivago’s revenue for 2024 was still half what it was five years ago in 2019, first-quarter 2025 revenues increased by 22% to $124 million.
An emphasis on young talent
While retirees are often known for traveling frequently, one of Trivago’s focuses is on young people, and it makes sense considering Gen Z’s spending habits. The generation was the only group that reported an increase in year-to-year travel spending between 2023 and 2024, according to Berkshire Hathaway’s State of Travel Insurance Report. The average trip was over $11,000.
“(We’re) trying to build an ecosystem—a culture and environment where young people can grow and where people can thrive,” Thomas says.
That’s another reason why Trivago’s C-suite is not stacked with Gen Xers, but instead millennials who understand how young people think, spend, and travel. According to Thomas, the average Trivago customer is 34 years old, and 20% have families.
By focusing on young people, Trivago is able to tap into not only a customer market, but also an employee talent market.
“You get rock stars on the senior level football team,” Thomas says. “And then you have a second team of young talents that have a chance to grow in this combination we try to execute on.”
The power of the intern
Trivago is not the only company that realized that those with the strongest roots to their company are the best leaders.
Last year, Nike became the latest Fortune 500 company to name a former intern as a CEO. Elliott Hill began at the sports-gear giant at age 19 as an apparel sales intern and has only ever had one company at the top of his paychecks. In a statement last year, Hill said Nike has “always been a core part of who I am.”
HP CEO Enrique Lores, Principal Financial Group CEO Deanna Strable, and EY CEO Janet Truncale all similarly went from fetching coffees as an intern to being promoted to the corner office.
And while focusing on hard work as an intern may set your path in motion to one day becoming chief executive, Lores admits that there’s also an element of luck.
“You can be very smart or very good,” he previously told Fortune. “But you also need to be lucky, and that’s a very important thing for all of us to accept.”
