Subscribe
Login
Business Travel

Travel Manager Jitters Over Wave of Corporate Agency Consolidation

Matthew Parsons

Photo Credit: Several UK firms have been swept up in the buying craze this year. Unsplash / Alex Tai

Skift Take

This year started with a bang for mergers and acquisitions, so naturally there'll be questions about whether they end up stifling competition.

The travel management world was shaken up, or shaken out, during the first five months of the year, with high-profile acquisitions and hundreds of millions invested by private equity firms. There are upsides to these mega-deals, but some travel managers are jittery, spooked by the amount of power that's concentrated in the hands of just a few players. American Express Global Business Travel got the ball rolling in January, buying high-end agency Ovation Travel, while Spain’s TravelPerk bought California-based Nextravel.

Join Us at the Skift Hospitality and Marketing Summit on June 16

In March, Pana was acquired by expense management company Coupa, and Roadmap by Emburse. The following month, TravelPerk announced it had raised $160 million. The pool shrunk further in May, with Amex GBT buying Egencia and TripActions making a swoop for Reed & Mackay (probably using some of the $155 million it raised earlier in the year). The list goes on. Why Now? The market’s not really been rocked this much since Amex GBT bought HRG in 2018. Then the pandemic arrived, and now we are seeing the results of months of planning and strategizing during the downtime. “Usually

Get unlimited access with Skift Pro.

Subscribe now for complete access to Skift.com's trusted coverage of the travel industry.

Apple Pay, Google Pay, Paypal, VISA, Mastercard, Discover, American Express

Already a subscriber? Login