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One of MTT's travel apps
# Taking off
A billion-dollar travel giant has paid a cool €55 million for one Dublin tech firm
After 10 years, the founders of Mobile Travel Technologies will share in a big payday.
DUBLIN-BASED MOBILE TRAVEL Technologies has been bought out by billion-dollar UK firm Travelport Worldwide.
The 10-year-old Irish mobile software developer, which was set up by English expat Gerry Samuels, counts companies like EasyJet and Singapore Airlines among its clients.
Travelport, which has a market value of $1.68 billion (€1.53 billion) and last year recorded revenues of over $2.1 billion (€1.9 billion), paid €55 million for the Dublin company.
It will also hand over shares worth €14.4 million to 28 executives at the smaller outfit, assuming the company hits its targets.
Mobile Travel Technologies (MTT) CEO Gerry Samuels said joining Travelport would help his company speed up its growth in providing ”cutting-edge mobile innovations to airlines and travel intermediaries so that they can better serve the end traveller”.
MTT has experienced very significant growth as the market and demand for mobile travel has expanded and there is enormous potential to grow further,” he said.
MTT provides apps with features like online bookings, check-in and mobile messaging on devices ranging from smartphones to the new Apple Watch.
The company will keep running under its own management as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the new parent.
Mobile booking boom
The buyout was the latest in a long chain of investments in travel technology from Travelport, which has recently taken a major stake in German company Travel-IT and Australian firm Locomote.
Travelport CEO Gordon Wilson said the buyout was a “natural extension” of its plans for “redefining travel commerce”.
Last year, nearly 200 million airfare bookings were made from mobile devices worldwide and the figure is predicted to pass 540 million by 2018, according to figures from Juniper Research.
The value of the trade is expected to grow from $52 billion to $145 billion over the same period.
