CVC Capital Partners buys Etraveli for 508 million Euro
CVC Capital Partners (“CVC”) today agreed to acquire Etraveli, the global flight-centric online travel agency (OTA), for 508 million Euro from ProSiebenSat.1. The German media company paid 235 million Euro for the company in October 2015 when it was purchased from Segulah.
Etraveli, with headquarters in Uppsala, Sweden, is a global e-commerce platform for flight tickets (e.g. Gotogate, Supersavertravel, Flygresor.se), combining a strong market position in the Nordics with a fast-growing international business.
The company operates in 46 countries on 5 continents. Etraveli has grown by about 40% annually since 2014 and sold airline tickets and related services to more than 5 million travelers in 2016 for an aggregate value of ca. SEK 18 billion.
Over the past few years, Etraveli has expanded internationally, achieving substantial market share in major European markets such as the UK, Germany and France. With CVC as its new partner, Etraveli is aiming to increase its global footprint and become the largest online travel agency in Europe.
“In recent years, Etraveli has been transformed into an international company with a clear strategy based on offering consumers cheaper airline tickets more efficiently than competitors in many corners of the world,” says Mathias Hedlund, CEO of Etraveli since 2014.
Commenting on the sale process, “It is with joy and anticipation that we today welcome our new owners, CVC. From the start of this process, CVC showed their astute understanding of both our future challenges and opportunities. Now we look forward to further enhancing our ambitions with CVC, striving to increase our international presence, both organically and through acquisitions,” he continues.
Lorne Somerville, Partner and Head of TMT at CVC, said: “The online travel sector is dynamic and fast-growing, and Etraveli is a clear front-runner due to its data-driven approach and highly scalable business model. We look forward to bringing the sector and wider CVC network together with Etraveli’s excellent management team to transform the company into a truly global platform.”
Gustaf Martin-Löf, Managing Director in CVC’s Nordics team, added “It is a great privilege to be working with Mathias and his team in the next stage of the company’s development.”
ABOUT ETRAVELI GROUP
Founded in the year 2000, Etraveli Group was one of the first companies to offer online booking of flight tickets. In those days, we sent them out by regular mail. Today that would be very difficult as we now have almost 12 million customers per year. We are the leading online travel agency in the Nordic countries, the fastest growing in Europe and our presence across the web spans 50 countries. We constantly find new solutions to bring travelers together, and make the world smaller.
About Etraveli Group
Etraveli Group is a leading global flight technology provider, specializing in flight sales and offering flight content delivery and fintech products. We partner with major global platforms such as Booking.com, Google Flights, Skyscanner, and Kayak, providing seamless flight booking and related services. Our B2B portfolio includes Precision, our specialist in travel fintech; Tripstack, our B2B Flights as a Service Provider and world leader in virtual interlining, serving as the gateway to Etraveli Group’s flight content and fulfillment services; Wenrix, the AI Infrastructure for profitable growth in air; and Flygresor.se, Sweden’s leading flight comparison site. We also operate our own online travel agency brands including Gotogate, Mytrip, and Flightnetwork. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, we have over 3,200 dedicated employees and more than 2,300 outsourced staff, across 11 offices worldwide, including Athens, Gothenburg, Krakow, London, Montevideo, Mumbai, Pune, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and Uppsala. We serve more than 48 million travellers annually across 75 markets and are owned by the private equity firms CVC Capital Partners and KKR.
We are here to solve the complexity by connecting millions of flights and travelers across the world.