Travelport has taken a majority stake in German tour distribution company travel-IT.
Germany's travel and leisure market weighs in as one of the largest in Europe, at Euro 26 million. That's a serious part of the European pie - and an economy that has shown more resilience than many others in the Euro zone.
Travelport wants to continue to make inroads into the digital distribution landscape there, and also use its experience to further entrench itself continent-wide.
In the release announcing the strategic investment, travel-IT's CEO Michael Kalt said:
Travelport is bringing with it real innovation that will transform our business for the long term. The investment marks a new milestone for our company and will increase revenue and growth for travel-IT and its partners. We plan to shake up the leisure sector and bring increased choice, flexibility and efficiency to tour operators, travel agencies and consumers.
Over the past two years, Travelport claims investment in its Travel Commerce Platform has reached $475 million. Its partner count now includes 400 airlines, 600,000 hotel properties and major car rental brands. A deeper integration with travel-IT allows that company's clients to have a wide range of access to Travelport's products.
On the Travelport side, Kalt's counterpart Gordon Wilson, the president and CEO of Travelport, emphasized how the investment fit into the recent spate of financial moves by the company:
The announcement today rounds off a year that has seen a number of important strategic investments for Travelport in our Travel Commerce Platform. We have expanded our Beyond Air capabilities in the payments, corporate travel and hotel distribution areas with our increased investment in eNett, our investment into Locomote and our acquisition of Hotelzon respectively.
This latest tuck-in investment in travel-IT for Germany is consistent with our strategy to address the previously unmet needs of our customers and to redefine travel commerce using newer and better technology to enable unrivalled access to travel content through empowered selling systems.
Additional investors include leading German tour operators who joined the latest funding round.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Travelport purchased Hotelzon in June last year, with its investment in Locomote coming two months later.