Articles tagged “latin america”

Online travel brands can no longer count on paid marketing alone to drive growth as they try to penetrate developing markets. Despegar is ahead of its larger global rivals in embracing "fintech." It sees consumer loans as a way to appeal to many travel buyers who don't use banks.

Latin America's Rappi now offers business travel alongside things like takeaways, pet food and furniture. It doesn’t sound like a winning combination, but different parts of the world have different appetites for digitization.

Despegar is playing the hand it's been dealt during the depths of the coronavirus crisis, and that means it will cut costs, ensure liquidity, and be on the prowl for opportunistic acquisitions to take market share.

U.S. airlines are flying all they can and selling cheap fares to fill planes. Copa was required by its government to do the opposite. It effectively stopped flying for months. It lost a lot of money in the second quarter, but perhaps not as much as you might think.

Despite rising coronavirus cases and airlines on the brink of collapse, Milla Travel could still make its mark in a region that's long overdue for modernization in the travel management space.

Despegar, Latin America's largest online travel company, will pay much, much less than its original $136 million proposed price to buy Mexican travel agency Best Day. Expect similar tough haggling over deal terms by travel companies across the globe.

Despegar had offered to pay a premium for Mexico's Best Day in January, but today the two companies are strapped for cash due to the pandemic's destruction of travel bookings. This acquisition may be one of several deals across the sector imperiled by coronavirus.

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.