As predicted there would be more Travel Companies securing online distribution by acquisition. TUI recently acquired Holidays Uncovered.
Travolution September 2007
TUI Travel snaps up Holidays Uncovered
We saw this coming.........
Travolution June 2006
Ed Whiting - How much would you pay for eSP?
Travel Remark September 2007
Travel 2.0 vs Search Engines – Where is your Travel traffic going to come from?
(At the time that I wrote this blog entry I didn’t realise that this deal was underway).
The question that I have now is whose next?
You could say that some have already happened without realising it…..First Choice (before the merger with TUI) acquired Laterooms.com to secure distribution. Travelzest Plc acquired Holiday.co.uk and Flight.co.uk as a portal to all it’s brands.
Here are a few likely candidates to be acquired……
Skyscanner.net
Global Travel Market / Asia Travel Market / Aus Travel Market
Holiday Watchdog
Cheapflights.co.uk
Travelrepublic.co.uk
Travelistic.com
Henoo aka TravelSearchResults
Teletext Holidays....maybe one day?
CarTrawler
Travelsupermarket.com
And here are a few likely acquirers…….
TUI – there will be more
Thomascook PLC – when they have finalised thier merger
Cosmos – will refocus on distribution next year
Lastminite.com/Travelocity – don’t have a social network
Priceline Europe
This list could be quite big!
4 comments:
I think you are spot on. I would definitely add Priceline Europe as a potential acquirer...
Guillaume
Guillaume, I have added it. Ed
Hi Ed,
I meant acquirer not acquiree...the market cap of Priceline is $3.37B...
Thanks.
Guillaume
www.hotel-blogs.com
Hi Guillaume, I have switched it round. Thinking about it, in this space at the moment, they could be aquired themsleves for distribution even with a large market cap! Ed
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