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Online Travel

Latin America's Despegar Will Have to Navigate Coronavirus Currency Impact

Sean O'Neill photo
Sean O'Neill
aerial shot rio de janiero brazil brasil sergio souza source unsplash

Photo Credit: A 2019 aerial shot of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a popular Latin American travel destination. CEO Despegar Damián Scokin announced the booking company's fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday. Unsplash / Sergio Souza

Skift Take

Coronavirus has caused turmoil in the global financial markets, which has devalued several key currencies and made foreign trips costlier. But devaluation may also make potential acquisition targets cheaper for Despegar, the region's largest online travel agency.

You might think an online travel agency group based in Buenos Aires would be stung by Latin America's ongoing economic woes. But you'd be only partly right. Despegar has navigated troubled times at home by diversifying its product mix and geographic markets and by driving more direct bookings. In late 2019, Latin America's airline gross bookings declined year-over-year. Economic turmoil in Argentina, and to a lesser extent in Brazil, plus social unrest in Chile, shrunk the travel industry. In December, Argentina introduced a 30 percent tax on purchases of international trips through travel agencies. Yet in the fourth quarter, Despegar enjoyed

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