{"id":494614,"date":"2026-05-20T19:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/494614\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T19:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:19:07","slug":"cartrawler-acquired-by-travel-giant-expedia-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/494614\/","title":{"rendered":"CarTrawler acquired by travel giant Expedia \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Irish travel technology company CarTrawler<\/a> has been acquired by US digital travel group Expedia.<\/p>\n

CarTrawler has been majority owned by British private-equity group TowerBrook Capital since May 2020 after it invested \u20ac100 million in the Irish business, which had been struggling to trade amid Covid<\/a> lockdown restrictions on the travel trade globally.<\/p>\n

The tech company, founded by brothers Greg and Niall Turley in 2004, having grown it out of their family business, Argus Car Hire, makes software that is used by airlines and travel agents to connect to car-hire firms, providing the carriers with ancillary revenue opportunities. It has offices in New York<\/a>, London<\/a>, Paris<\/a> and Sydney.<\/p>\n

CarTrawler has a network of more than 2,200 car rental and \u201cmobility\u201d suppliers in 150 countries. Its airline and other partners include EasyJet<\/a>, Air France-KLM<\/a>, Uber<\/a>, American Express<\/a> and United Airlines<\/a>. It also sells insurance<\/a> products.<\/p>\n

Expedia is one of the world\u2019s biggest digital travel companies. Its sites include Expedia, Trivago, hotels.com and ebookers.<\/p>\n

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but industry sources speculated the company would be worth north of $450 million (\u20ac387 million).<\/p>\n

CarTrawler said it would advance its strategy to build the most complete business-to-business travel platform. It said it had \u201csignificantly expanded\u201d its global footprint.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, the businesses will unlock new opportunities for supply partners to access incremental demand, for business-to-business partners to integrate richer and more competitive travel ancillary solutions and for travellers to benefit from greater choice and value,\u201d the companies said in a joint statement.<\/p>\n

CarTrawler chief executive Peter O\u2019Donovan said the deal was \u201ca testament to the strength of our technology, the drive of our people, our track record of innovation and our accelerating commercial momentum\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis exciting combination allows us to advance our mission as part of travel\u2019s best and most complete business-to-business engine, unlocking new opportunities for innovation and growth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

CarTrawler paid a dividend of just under \u20ac9.1 million to its parent company in 2024 at a time when its revenue increased marginally but its profit declined by 40 per cent.<\/p>\n

Latest accounts for Etrawler Unlimited Company for the year to the end of September 2024 show the dividend was paid to its immediate parent, ET Holdco, which is based on the Isle of Man. This dividend was down from a figure of \u20ac46.7 million a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Revenue rose by 1.3 per cent to \u20ac172.3 million, but its profit after tax declined to \u20ac6.6 million from just over \u20ac11 million a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose by 2.3 per cent to \u20ac23.3 million.<\/p>\n

Expedia Group chief commercial officer Alfonso Paredes described the deal as \u201canother huge, exciting step towards our ambition of building the most complete business-to-business travel platform\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cAcquiring Tiqets helped us solve for activities at scale. Adding CarTrawler now extends that same strategy into car rentals, ground transport and insurtech,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarTrawler\u2019s focus and differentiated expertise in these areas complements our strengths in business-to-business scale and technology, enabling us to massively amplify our joint value proposition to partners, suppliers and travellers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon Holmes, chief investment officer at TowerBrook, said the group was confident at the time that it would emerge from Covid-related industry dislocation as an \u201cindustry champion\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe performance over the last six years, driven by innovation and commercial excellence, has exceeded all expectations,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The transaction, which remains subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to be completed in the second half of this year.<\/p>\n

Expedia Group generated $14.73 billion (\u20ac12.7 billion) in annual revenue last year, which was an increase of about 7.6 per cent on 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish travel technology company CarTrawler has been acquired by US digital travel group Expedia. CarTrawler has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[180602,71981,79,215588,64,47459,18,19,3912,17,130,8300,968,11935,29639,71982],"class_list":["post-494614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-air-france-klm","tag-american-express","tag-business","tag-cartrawler","tag-covid-19","tag-easyjet","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-insurance","tag-ireland","tag-london","tag-motors","tag-new-york","tag-paris","tag-uber","tag-united-airlines"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116608523780432083","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}