 "MakeMyTrip buys Dutch hotel booking portal for Rs 30 crore")
Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip has acquired Amsterdam-based hotel bookings portal Easytobook.com (ETB) for $5 million (Rs 30 crore). India's leading online travel company has picked up the entire equity interest in ETB.
Deep Kalra, founder and group chief executive, MakeMyTrip.com, said, "Like us, EasyToBook has a strong focus on technology and innovation and being a pure-play hotel site, it brings domain expertise. ETB's rich inventory of online hotel reservations in Europe, North America and other key global travel destinations will enable us to enhance hotel offerings for our Indian customers travelling to Europe and North America."
The latest acquisition is in line with MMT's strategy of ramping its hotel bookings business, where the margins are higher. The company had taken over Hotel Travel Group, which operated hoteltravel.com, in November. The $25-million buy had added 70,000 international hotels, mostly in Southeast Asia, to MMT's inventory.
The company gets most of its revenues from airline bookings.
In the long term, it wants to achieve an equal balance between its air and non-air revenues due to the wafer-thin margins in the ticketing business.
Easytobook.com is a ten-year old company, which offers online hotel reservations across Europe and North America. Its technology development team is based at Herzliya, Israel. "The acquisition of EasyToBook.com will add momentum to our stated objective of growing our hotel and online holidays business. As we expand our presence beyond the Southeast Asia region, we look forward to welcoming inbound customers to our hotel partners in Asia," Kalra added.
The travel company had also picked up majority stake in Singapore-based tour and hotel reservation agency Luxury Tours and Travel for $3.4 million and 19.9 per cent stake in Le Travenues Technology which runs online travel aggregator iXigo.com for $4.8 million.
Deep Kalra, founder and group chief executive, MakeMyTrip.com, said, "Like us, EasyToBook has a strong focus on technology and innovation and being a pure-play hotel site, it brings domain expertise. ETB's rich inventory of online hotel reservations in Europe, North America and other key global travel destinations will enable us to enhance hotel offerings for our Indian customers travelling to Europe and North America."
The latest acquisition is in line with MMT's strategy of ramping its hotel bookings business, where the margins are higher. The company had taken over Hotel Travel Group, which operated hoteltravel.com, in November. The $25-million buy had added 70,000 international hotels, mostly in Southeast Asia, to MMT's inventory.
The company gets most of its revenues from airline bookings.
In the long term, it wants to achieve an equal balance between its air and non-air revenues due to the wafer-thin margins in the ticketing business.
Easytobook.com is a ten-year old company, which offers online hotel reservations across Europe and North America. Its technology development team is based at Herzliya, Israel. "The acquisition of EasyToBook.com will add momentum to our stated objective of growing our hotel and online holidays business. As we expand our presence beyond the Southeast Asia region, we look forward to welcoming inbound customers to our hotel partners in Asia," Kalra added.
The travel company had also picked up majority stake in Singapore-based tour and hotel reservation agency Luxury Tours and Travel for $3.4 million and 19.9 per cent stake in Le Travenues Technology which runs online travel aggregator iXigo.com for $4.8 million.
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