Articles tagged “despegar”

Emerging markets will shape the future of the travel industry but each region requires a unique strategy. MakeMyTrip and Despegar, online travel leaders in India and Latin America, provide distinct insights into how to succeed their respective home markets.

Suddenly those seemingly free-spending online travel agencies, which have made Google rich, are toning down their big-spending ways. Google shouldn't be too worried: Expedia and Booking Holdings are still spending billions of dollars on search-engine marketing, but they've just become a bit more stingy. And, they hope, wise.

Lousy economies in key markets have hurt Despegar's profit. But deft management during the recent storms suggests the online travel agency has a promising future.

Despegar will need to become even more of a force in Latin America if it hopes to tempt major shareholder Expedia Group into acquiring it.

The biggest online travel story in Latin America in 2017 was Despegar's IPO. The Expedia-backed booking site raised $332 million to fund its expansion. The company has hinted that it is likely to use some of the cash to make an acquisition in 2018.

This week in digital news, we thought about new beginnings. Expedia's new CEO wants to chip away at Google's dominance and Expedia-supported Despegar successfully launched an IPO.

With its IPO on Wednesday, Despegar became the world's seventh-largest online travel company by market cap. Its bosses talk a good game. But its major markets may have near-term hiccups ahead.

Expedia would own 14 percent of online travel agency Despegar post-IPO. But contemplating the odds of an Expedia takeover is a "rompecabeza,” or a head-breaker.

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.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Decolar approached local airlines to forge partnerships, the carriers just didn't appreciate what the site was trying to do. But Decolar, which has its struggles today, indeed outlasted many of those airlines.