- Skyscanner sold for €1.65bn.
- Gareth Williams could not find a cheap flight
Scotland-based price comparison site Skyscanner Holdings.has been bought by Chinese counterpart Ctrip.com in a deal worth US$1.74bn/ €1.65bn.
Skyscanner was the result of CEO and co-founder Gareth Williams’s frustration with finding cheap flights, with two friends, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes.
It enables users to compare prices from different travel sites when searching for plane tickets, hotels, and rental cars.
The website serves 60m monthly active users and is available in more than 30 languages.
The company was valued at US$1.6bn in a funding round in January, when it raised £128m pounds from a group of investors that included Malaysia’s sovereign fund, Khazanah Nasional, and Yahoo Japan.
Gareth never travels without: “Pen and paper. It´s harder to doodle on a device.”
