Canada's Busbud Inc., a leading ticket booking company, has fully acquired Turkish online ticket sales platform neredennereye.com, according to the Turkish language daily, Hürriyet.
However, the financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Neredennereye.com served a total of 25 million visitors in the first 10 months of the year. In 2019, this figure is expected to reach 35 million with a turnover exceeding TL 100 million ($18.56 million).
In 2015, Neredennereye.com received 1.25 million euros in investment as part of the merger with Clickbus Turkey. The company's previous investors include Rocket Internet and Ooredoo's Asia Pacific Internet Group and Germany-based Holtzbrinck Ventures and Tengelmann Ventures.
Busbud CEO Louis Philippe Maurice said the acquisition is part of Busbud's strategy to open up to international markets. He added that Turkey's solid domestic market, as well as neredennereye.com's strong growth figures, encouraged them to make the purchase.
Maurice pointed out that neredennereye.com achieved around 500 percent growth between 2014 and 2018. He stressed that in addition to Turkey's rapidly growing local market of 80 million, there is also a strong tourism sector that attracts 35 million tourists annually to important destinations like Istanbul, Antalya, Ankara and Cappadocia. Maurice said that with the acquisition of neredennereye.com, they want to be in a much stronger position.
Neredennereye.com General Manager Erol Demirtaş said that Turkey has the seventh largest intercity bus ticket market in the world, with sales of over 225 million tickets in 2017 and that neredennereye.com's know-how will be used in the 80 countries where Busbud operates.
Demirtaş said that with the integration, Turkish consumers will now be able to purchase bus tickets from 3,900 companies in 80 countries using Turkish lira through neredennereye.com.
Based in Montreal, Canada, Busbud Inc. operates in over 20,000 cities in 80 countries worldwide and lists more than 2.3 million destinations on its online and mobile platforms. Founded in 1999, neredennereye.com provides online ticket sales services for more than 180 travel companies, selling tickets for airline companies such as Turkish Airlines (THY), AtlasGlobal and Anadolu Jet.
Maurice said Busbud is currently only engaged in intercity bus tickets but with the purchase of neredennereye.com, which has experience in airline ticket sales, it can also start evaluating the opportunities in this field.
