New Zealand-based booking and expense management provider Serko for several years has been expanding into North America, and soon it will leapfrog the competition to become the second-largest corporate online booking provider in North America with the acquisition of one of the pioneers in that space.
Serko, led by co-founder and CEO Darrin Grafton, reached a deal with Sabre to acquire the GetThere online booking tool for US$12 million, a deal the companies expect to close on Jan. 6. With a global reach and a customer base that includes some of the largest travel programs in the U.S.—Marsh McClennan, Deloitte, Accenture, International Monetary Fund and Oracle among them—only Concur will have a larger online booking tool customer presence in the region following the acquisition.
GetThere, which began as Internet Travel Network in 1995, was among the first corporate online booking tools, for which Sabre paid the hefty price of $757 million when acquiring it nearly a quarter-century ago. Despite its age, Grafton said there has been ongoing work on the platform "that probably wasn't visible to the public," which has included "building some pretty good modernization of their platform."
Once the acquisition is complete, Serko plans to continue offering GetThere, which Grafton said has "massive brand recognition," as part of a multi-brand platform. Its Zeno booking tool already has won over some big clients in the Australasia region, and GetThere adds global scale on the large enterprise side to complement what Serko has also been building on the smaller client side via its partnership with Booking.com for Business.
The idea is to "have a platform that could span from SMB to large enterprise [where] we cover all the customers and also have all the insights how possible configuration is done," Grafton said.
The deal also secured Sabre as a long-term partner for Serko, including co-development, co-investment and co-marketing. Additionally, Serko plans to invest NZ$160 million (US$93.3 million) in product and technology over the next three years.
Under Grafton's leadership, Serko this year also met its goal of turning cash-flow-positive for the first time, which has enabled the acquisition and upcoming investment.