Done deals: Who bought whom in 2024

In another busy year for mergers and acquisitions within the corporate travel sector, there was one deal that stood head and shoulders above the others: American Express Global Business Travel’s planned $570 million takeover of rival travel management company CWT.

The announcement of the deal to bring together two of the world’s largest TMCs in late March stunned the industry and was also BTN Europe’s most read story of 2024.

Amex GBT had initially hoped to complete the CWT acquisition by the end of the year but it had to be pushed back into early 2025 after the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an in-depth probe into the impact of the deal. The final outcome of this process will likely be one of the biggest stories in the early weeks of the new year.

There’s also been plenty of other M&A activity in the TMC sector, with Gray Dawes fuelling its international growth through deals to buy VCK Travel in the Netherlands and Australia’s Verve Travel. Other UK-based TMCs such as TAG and ISON Travel have also been busy acquiring other businesses in 2024.

Meanwhile, Barcelona-based TravelPerk took a big step forward in its US expansion ambitions after buying AmTrav while Concur co-founder and Spotnana CEO Steve Singh led an investment group which acquired US-based Direct Travel with plans for the TMC to expand into Europe.

There were fewer major new deals in the aviation sector during 2024 but we did see several previously announced transactions, including Lufthansa’s purchase of a stake in Italy’s ITA Airways, finally going through after gaining clearance from regulators.

The travel technology industry saw plenty of smaller deals, with Amadeus snapping up biometric specialist Vision-Box and Spanish payments firm Voxel. Meanwhile, longstanding corporate online booking tool GetThere also changed hands with Serko buying the platform from Sabre for just $12 million.

The following stories covering mergers, acquisitions and business launches were all published by Business Travel News and Business Travel News Europe in 2024:

January
Gray Dawes closes deal that will see TMC ‘almost double’ in size
InteleTravel acquires meetings agency MGME
Cvent acquires two trade show tech companies
Amadeus acquires biometrics solutions specialist