Articles tagged “decolar”

Shakira has paved the way for other Latin America artists. Despegar hopes she can open more doors for the company, as well.

If you work for an online travel agency and suggested it open brick-and-mortar stores to bring customers online, you would get very quizzical looks, at the least. Let's see if it works in Argentina and Brazil for Despegar/Decolar.

Brazil is a huge market, as are airline tickets, for Despegar. A rival with an alleged Ponzi scheme for selling airline tickets wasn't really fair competition.

You probably won't see many credit card machines at Despegar's stores or booths in Argentina. But you will see travelers with cash.

Despegar is growing with a steady pace of mergers and acquisitions, including Viajanet and Stays. It's a smart move to use vacation rentals to defend and expand market share.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was clear there would be plenty of mergers and acquisition targets. Despegar found at least a couple in Viajanet and Stays.

Like Traveloka in Indonesia, Argentina's Despegar is making strides in financial services. Amsterdam-based Booking.com is busy building a payments platform, and Grab Taxi in Southeast Asia has a lending and insurance arm. Megatrend, yes.

The Argentine economic crisis continues to drag on Despegar, but the online travel agency's continuous investment in mobile is setting it up for long-term growth across the continent.

Does Expedia or Booking have the energy to launch their booking apps in four local Indian dialects? Maybe not, but MakeMyTrip does, and that local effort matters.

Despegar is on track to attract a $1 billion valuation. That's impressive. But its newish CEO needs to pivot the business away from a reliance on selling airline tickets, which are becoming less profitable for his firm by the day.