Six Shooters
E-Dreams is an online travel agency founded in 1999 and based in Barcelona. It is now part of the ODIGEO Group with bookings of
€3.9bn in 2011. BuyVIP is
private
sales club similar to Vente Privée in France. Founded in 2006, it was sold to Amazon in October 2010 for a figure the WSJ gave as €70m. They also reported that 2010 sales were projected as €130m. Privalia is also a
private sales club that was founded in 2006. Their press room reported sales in 2010 of €168.43m. A Reuters report estimated their sales in 2011 would reach €400m. Terra was founded in 1999 as a spinoff of Telefonica. The company was quoted on the NASDAQ until 2005 when it was reabsorbed by its parent. Although seen in Spain as a dot com crash and burn, Terra is Latin America´s leading Internet company, with 70 million unique visitors per month. Online shopping comparison service Kelkoo was founded in France in 1999 and merged with Madrid based DondeComprar in April 2000. The exit came when following other mergers with similar operations in other countries; they were acquired by Yahoo in for €475m in March 2004. Finally Rumbo, another online travel agency, was created in 2000 as a joint venture between Telefonica and Amadeus. In 2008, Amadeus sold their share to Orizonia, a Spanish tourism conglomerate. Rumbo had sales of €485m in 2010.
While the numbers are impressive, private buying clubs and two online travel agencies live off thin margins. There is not a great deal of intellectual property or business model innovation. As Spain is now the second more visited country in the world, it should be no surprise that travel features strongly. As well as ODIGEO and Rumbo, coming up behind are three other similar companies with competing products. Atrapalo was founded in 2000 in a bar in Barcelona. Eleven years, later they reported sales of €210m. They are a very good example of an organic startup who built up the business with customers rather than with Venture Capital. In 2007, they had a “cash out” selling 20% of the business to a Private Equity firm. Three of the four founders continue to run the business with expansion into Latin America being the main priority. Logitravel was founded in 2004 in Palma on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. The emphasis is on leisure travel and a variety of options from beach holidays, to cruises to skiing. Sales had reached €294m by 2012 with more than 30% of this number from outside Spain.
40 entrepreneurcountry
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