15 Travel Tech Acquisitions in the Last 10 Weeks — See the List

15.06.2024 - 10:51 / skift.com / Justin Dawes

The travel tech industry is ripe for consolidation. 

That is what industry experts have been saying all year, and it seems they’re right.

There have been at least 15 acquisitions involving travel tech companies over the last two and a half months alone. 

Among them: Mews, a cloud hospitality provider, made its ninth acquisition, SITA bought an airport check-in software company, and Amadeus acquired a biometrics company for $348 million.

Investment bank AGC Partners is among those that believe merger and acquisition activity is on the rise, with more activity expected into next year. 

“The real action is yet to come,” AGC stated.

The company published an analysis on the topic in April that said the pieces are in place for more deals. Those pieces include an improving funding environment and the fact that tech private equity firms have about $300 billion to deploy, AGC said. 

In the 15 deals outlined below, nearly none of the sale prices were disclosed. That often — but not always — means it was a small deal, especially in the case of a startup buying another company.

But that’s not a surprise, as venture capitalists post-pandemic are favoring companies with strong business models. Meanwhile, startups that raised too much money during the pandemic are bending under the high exceptions from investors, and many with weak business models are closing. (That was the case for Cabana, which closed because it could not find an investor or a buyer.)

And that’s where well-funded companies can swoop in to make acqui-hires or expand tech stacks for cheap.  

AGC named several companies it believes are well-positioned to make more acquisitions, a couple of which are mentioned below: IBS Software, Guesty, Hostaway, Mews, Travelport, Tripleseat, Cvent, and Cendyn.

Amadeus in April acquired Vision Box for $348 million, with plans to expand its biometrics services for airports. (And in March, Amadeus acquired payments company Voxel for $123 million.)

Paris-based Travelsoft acquired four companies in May: tech companies TravelgateX, Atcore Technology, and Travel Connection Technology, as well as French travel trade publisher and events company Eventiz Media Group. Travelsoft primarily provides tech to travel agents and tour operators for selling and marketing travel packages 

Tel Aviv-based Guesty, which provides a property management system for vacation rentals, in May acquired Rentals United, which offers distribution services in the same sector. (The CEO of Guesty was on a panel at Skift’s inaugural Data and AI Summit in June.)

DerbySoft, a hotel distribution tech company, said in April that it was expanding into the airline industry through the acquisition of Pkfare. 

Mews, the startup cloud-based property management