ebookers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ebookers.com is an online travel company based out of the UK and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Travelport, the former travel arm of Cendant which was bought in October 2006 by an affiliate of Blackstone Partners. Travelport split out itself into three companies. The part of the business related to the B2C arm is called Orbitz Worldwide and was floated in the Nasdaq in July 2007.
ebookers is a pan-European travel website specialising in the mid and long-haul travel arena, offering a wide and varying range of travel products including hotel reservations, flights, car hire and sports packages. It formerly operated high street travel agents in Ireland, closing its Dublin branch in 2006 and going internet-only.[1]
At the time of Cendant's original acquisition (28th February 2005), ebookers was valued at $350 million.
ebookers was formed in 1999, by Dinesh Dhamija, but its origins go back almost 20 years. In 1983 Flightbookers Ltd was founded, a London-based travel agency. Flightbookers grew into one of the UK's biggest travel agencies and in 1996 established a website, the first interactive travel website in the UK. This was so successful that in 1999 the internet arm was separated to form ebookers and the new company taken public with a flotation on Nasdaq in New York and Germany's Neuer Markt. The $61M raised at flotation was used to roll-out ebookers across Europe. In November 2000 ebookers bought Flightbookers for $15M, reuniting the two companies.
The ebookers website failed to appear on the first page of Google search rankings - this was in part because all websites were hosted on the same external IP address for about 10 months. However, with a change in the hosting infrastructure, it can now be found on the first page of Google's results.
ebookers had a platform revamp and a brand relaunch for the UK market in July 2007. ebookers launched a travel news section in the UK, where news related to airlines, airports and popular destinations are updated daily.[2]
