Why Did These Cousins Buy Their Company Back From Travelport?
Photo Credit: Cousins David Fastuca (left) and Ross Fastuca founded Locomote in 2012. Locomote
Skift Take
It’s a convoluted story, but one that encapsulates where corporate travel is heading: ecosystems rather than dominant agencies that promise the world.
Who’d want to start a corporate travel agency in these pandemic times? Well, quite a lot of people, it turns out.
Now Locomote’s founders, cousins David and Ross Fastuca, are back in the game having sold, then bought back, their platform to Travelport.
The convoluted story began in 2012. Along the way, Ross Fastuca has told Skift how the pair may have been too early with their real-time booking tool, and how the company “lost its heart” under Travelport — the global distribution company has declined to comment on this statement. But since taking back operational control in January, the Fastucas are ready for a reboot.
To work out how they came to buy back their business at “a Covid discount” — no figures given due to a non-disclosure agreement — Fastuca turns back the clock.
“David and I have been building technology since our teenage years, and been in business for 25 years,” he said. In 2012, they built a “skin” on top of a booking engine for a t
