Articles tagged “despegar”

Coronavirus has caused turmoil in the global financial markets, which has devalued several key currencies and made foreign trips costlier. But devaluation may also make potential acquisition targets cheaper for Despegar, the region's largest online travel agency.

At a stroke, Despegar will boost its annual revenue by about 25 percent. Acquiring Best Day Travel Group, one of the largest travel agencies in Mexico, will also solidify its set of products, including in the promising business-to-business segment.

Despegar doesn't follow the same playbook as the global online travel players. Charting its own path has worked for the Latin American agency. Expect Despegar to make a strategic acquisition this year to support its heady plans for growth.

Brazil’s CVC Corp.’s purchase of Argentina’s Almundo is a strategic move to increase its digital reach — but more importantly it helps CVC build even greater scale beyond its home borders.

Some religions take it on faith that their messiah will come, but they stoically accept that the arrival has been delayed indefinitely. Similarly, Despegar believes that the online travel revolution will sweep Latin America, but it accepts that the glorious moment has been delayed indefinitely. Consumer financing is its secret sauce to sustain itself while it waits.

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.

The conventional wisdom has been that the online travel market in Latin America will narrow down to a fight between Expedia-supported Despegar and global brands like Booking.com. But Almundo, thanks to backing from Iberostar, might put up a meaningful fight.

No one saw that Argentina's economy would take such a bad turn this year. But Despegar, based in Buenos Aires, is making moves to weather the storm after its market valuation has been slashed in half.

An Expedia acquisition of Thomas Cook? While problematic on many fronts, including buying all of those offline agents, it isn't out of the question. Consider that Expedia would gain access to a customer base in Europe that it hardly touches. Expedia's Barry Diller has made a ton of acquisitions. He and Okerstrom are hardly done yet.

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.