Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B

Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B(ir.ctrip.com)

189 points by muratmutlu 9 years ago | 80 comments

stewhuk 9 years ago |

Skyscanner is based in Edinburgh, with another large office in Glasgow. This is huge news for the Scottish tech scene, and will hopefully bring much needed cash to help it thrive. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening here in all types of tech.

Sadly Scotland's other unicorn, FanDuel, looks set to close its hq in Edinburgh after merging with draft kings. However, that will probably release a lot of talent to help smaller co's

ddeck 9 years ago | |

Skyscanner is a fantastic service. I'm really hoping CTrip don't bring their dark patterns, spam, and generally scammy behavior to it.

My experiences with Ctrip includes regular price revisions after booking (and after they ensure they have all of your personal information), added fees for "discount coupons" which can't be removed and are only included after they have your payment information, regular spam despite opting out, and various other deceptive behaviors.

Unlike most booking engines, they often advertise firm prices for hotels, flights etc, but don't actually have confirmed inventory and often take days to confirm (or cancel or revise) the booking despite having taking your payment information already. This is only revealed after taking payment info.

There are also reports of them illegally selling children's tickets as adult tickets and trying to sell tickets purchased via mileage. [1]

[1] http://www.shanghaidaily.com/metro/society/Flyers-left-in-lu...

Finbarr 9 years ago | |

Yes this really is phenomenal news for Scotland. Here's hoping they were generous with stock and we see a new wave of angel investors emerge.

According to https://angel.co/skyscanner-2 they last raised almost 200m at a 1.6b valuation. I wonder what kind of terms were attached to that. I'm guessing investors will have walked away with a pretty large chunk of the sale.

yla92 9 years ago | | |

Through angel.co link, I realise that Sequoia Capital is major investor in them. I can't help but wonder how Sequoia Capital has a share in majority of exists/current "unicorn" companies.

tomhoward 9 years ago | | |

The founders have already taken some money off the table and made some angel investments. I'm sure that will accelerate now.

dvdhnt 9 years ago | |

> happening here

Does that mean you're living there? I'm curious what the prospects are like there.

There's been more discussion lately about us Americans looking for work abroad. My wife is finally on board with making a move out of the US as a family, so I'm glad it's being discussed more.

cmdkeen 9 years ago | | |

On the more corporate end of the market in Edinburgh there is a definite shortage of tech talent. Pay isn't at American levels but Edinburgh is the best city in the UK in terms of average disposable income - an average £800 per month compared to London's £300. Job security is also pretty rock solid. It's also a World Heritage site, has pretty good transport links to the rest of Europe and you can easily spend weekends in the country/Highlands.

It's not London but then a developer up here should have no problem owning a house, raising a family and having a decent quality of life. All while working a 35 hour week so you actually have time to enjoy living here.

aaronbasssett 9 years ago | | |

There is an estimated 5k more developer jobs per year in central Scotland than there are developers to fill them, so it is a pretty good time to be a developer here. Especially if you're senior level or above as you'd be in high demand.

Salary is not going to be as high as Silicon Valley, but living expenses are much lower[1]. A senior developer can expect to earn around £40k

I actually live in Glasgow and work in Edinburgh, and both cities are fantastic. Glasgow has more vibrant nightlife and music scene; while Edinburgh is so historic with beautiful architecture.

Also our politicians are not as bat shit crazy as the rest of the UK which is nice.

[1]: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

paulsutter 9 years ago | | |

Prospects are good generally for technology talent. I'm in Tokyo now. Take a big chunk of vacation and visit several places that you have considered moving. Once you've visited and met other expats, you'll know what it's really like. The biggest barrier is your own decision.

mabbo 9 years ago | | |

Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities in the world. Spent a year of University there, and visited it on vacation a couple months ago.

There's a pretty cool tech scene, much of it spinning off the University of Edinburgh (great school for AI). Also, a friend gave me a tour of the Amazon Edinburgh office while I was visiting- it's 11 years old (first non-US office), still growing and seems to be doing some neat stuff.

Real estate is different from America. People live in much smaller spaces and generally don't have yards if you live in a city. You'd have to accept that, or commute into the city. That said, Edinburgh is a beautiful city architecturally (the New Town especially). I also found the food to be pretty fantastic.

brad0 9 years ago | | |

There's some okay tech here - nothing like Seattle or San Francisco.

The biggest difference is the market. Expect to get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of the US.

---

EDIT that being said, contracting can pay well if you have the right skills and don't mind who you work for.

m-i-l 9 years ago | | |

As much as I love Edinburgh, and hope the technology sector and economy there (and in Scotland as a whole) thrives, it has to be said that the technology job market is currently very small in comparison to London. Some stats to put this in perspective: There are 328,000 "digital tech jobs" in London[0], the entire population of Edinburgh is 464,990[1], and Edinburgh is the 11th biggest technology cluster in the UK with 21,000 "digital tech jobs"[0].

And if you're thinking of relocating your family from the US, there are 5 American schools in and around London[2], whereas I believe the only one in Scotland is in Aberdeen[3].

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37380696

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_in_England

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_School_of_Aberde...

pjc50 9 years ago | | |

I love living in Edinburgh, but I will admit that its startup scene is kind of tiny. There's a decent number of IT multinationals about though.

However, your biggest difficulty will be being an immigrant to the EU. These days it's a pretty damn arduous process.

pidg 9 years ago | | |

The quality of life in Edinburgh is very high.[1] It's a really fantastic place to live.

I think the tech scene is quite strong and growing - as well as the multinationals and start-ups, there are a lot of well-established small/medium tech companies based here, too.

[1] https://www.uswitch.com/media-centre/2015/10/edinburgh-best-...

neximo64 9 years ago | |

Not to pile onto nationalist sentiment but anything of this size is quite big for the British tech scene too. Heck European too. We don't have many unicorns on this side.

tomhoward 9 years ago |

The company was formed in 2001 by three IT professionals, Gareth Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes, after one of them was frustrated by the difficulties of finding cheap flights to ski resorts.[1]

Lessons: scratching a trivial-seeming personal itch can pay off handsomely in the long term. And it takes a loooong time to make it big in travel.

Like most travel startup founders who've attended industry events over the past few years, I've crossed paths with Gareth and Barry a few times, and found them to be thoroughly warm, supportive and decent people.

This result is fully deserved.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscanner

donw 9 years ago | |

Disclaimer: I'm the Engineering Director for Skyscanner's Japan office.

During my interview process, I had an hour session with Gareth, and since joining the company in February, have had several opportunities to work with him directly.

He is a very kind person, and works hard to take care of both his team and our travelers. It's actually a core part of how we do business: the needs of the traveler come first, and our profit metrics come second.

I'm glad to see people like that be successful.

contingencies 9 years ago |

From about 2005-2009 I founded a hotel reservation platform in direct competition to CTrip and ELong, both of whom were already Nasdaq listed with deep pockets. I successfully grew the business to the same network size as the competitors on a shoestring budget through automation, undercutting them on almost every property, and even offered services in six human languages (they almost managed 2). We received rave reviews from users, most of whom were local. The problem was, I didn't have the capital for a marketing budget, every advertising channel we tried had very low returns, and I was not confident enough to seek capital domestically. I still think there is loads of room for alternative booking platforms here in China, but the up-front capital costs to buy in to a large enough audience remain fairly significant.

paradite 9 years ago | |

What do you think of the current competitors like Tuniu.com and Qunar.com?

contingencies 9 years ago | | |

Qunar was a travel meta-search engine in those days; we used to pay them to list our inventory. Their API was quite shoddy. We stopped paying them, because it didn't make sense (we paid more for less business in return than was profitable). They then turned around and started offering the same services other companies used to offer and advertise through them... after they'd taken everyone's listing and price data. I personally find that a questionable change of model which would have caused legal havoc in a western context, not so in China. Tuniu I am unfamiliar with.

fatman13gg 9 years ago | |

> From about 2005-2009 I founded a hotel reservation platform in direct competition to CTrip and ELong

So it's hotels only? No flights, cars etc?

contingencies 9 years ago | | |

Yep. Flights in China are routed through a single government clearing house not multiple commercial systems as per the west. In addition, at that time tickets still required physical delivery to the customer. Therefore, we considered it was too much hassle to go through the government approvals in order to compete with established local providers, a market which remains very fragmented. Car rental is beginning to take off now, but was exceptionally rare at that time.

Fifer82 9 years ago |

Well done SkyScanner! I live 20 minutes from Edinburgh, and I don't really see what others are saying here. I am in a very flexible but really lame paid role, I have friends who have offered me a job in England twice. In Edinburgh though, it is either corporate jobs (demand), low paid hacky jobs for media agencies (pays in peanuts), and everything else is 50k jobs paying 28k via a recruitment agency who skims all the cream... ie: You need to be a mug.

Otherwise where are people seeing all the tech jobs?

nemesisj 9 years ago | |

Well, my company Administrate is hiring in Edinburgh and we are still a fairly early stage (~50 people) startup. We pay pretty well. Check out www.getadministrate.com

Fifer82 9 years ago | | |

Awesome mate! Unfortunately, I wouldn't be much good for your available roles, but great to see another successful local company going strong. All the best with going forward.

johnnyfaehell 9 years ago | |

> everything else is 50k jobs paying 28k via a recruitment

I have no idea how that even works. Every time I got a job from a recruiter in the UK I got 100% of the month. Recruiters get paid on top of what you get paid, not you paying them.

Fifer82 9 years ago | | |

Unregulated Middlemen. My best friend is a successful IT Recruiter in Glasgow picking up 6 figures this year, and the amount of perks he gets from the company is almost unbelievable. Good on him! However, that kind of wealth isn't coming from a 2% fee like a 1998 high street office worker agency. It is coming from somewhere, and that somewhere is your pocket.

Marazan 9 years ago | | |

The recruiter gets a percentage of your listed salary (the percentages are eye waterigly huge)

So the company that employs you was obviously willing to pay a higher salary than they one they gave you.

dajohnson89 9 years ago | | |

Your point is valid, but consider that recruitment is a labour cost either way. It will eat into the salary.

garagemc2 9 years ago |

This is great news for skyscanner. Unfortunately, the media in the UK will go all nativist and claim that Britain is being sold out to foreign countries, as they did with ARM.

welly 9 years ago | |

Yep. I can see it now...

"Scottish technology firm Skyscanner sells out to foreign interests".

vs.

"British technology firm Skyscanner does something the media sees in a positive light"

smcl 9 years ago | | |

I don't think OP meant that this is the Failure=Scottish/Success=British terminology thing (which I'm not convinced exists), but more that the UK media will use this as a way to peddle their "Broken Britain" message. ARM's sale was seen in people like us in tech as just another huge acquisition, but the UK media portrayed it as evidence that the UK is "losing" and that something needs to be done about it.

kowdermeister 9 years ago |

I had to double check the number. Never thought that Skyscanner was this profitable.

samsonradu 9 years ago | |

Hell, me too! I use SkyScanner quite often and it's a great product, but the price still seems out of line. Maybe there's more to it than users see. How does it monetize its users?

djmobley 9 years ago | | |

Affiliate fees

dorianm 9 years ago |

Skyscanner is so good, even travel agencies use it (source: a french travel agency).

jpatokal 9 years ago |

Interesting -- this may be the largest foreign acquisition by a Chinese internet company to date? Largest I'm aware of was Riot Games by Tencent, which was on the order of $400 million.

jonknee 9 years ago | |

Tencent also bought Supercell for $8.6 billion.

jpatokal 9 years ago | | |

Yes, but they bought it from Japan's Softbank, which had purchased it previously.

ben_utzer 9 years ago |

No mentions of Kayak? I use kayak because they seems to be more up to date. Sometimes other players don't have the special offers that kayak already shows. Sometimes kayak is also slow to update.

I tried also other metasearches, but they mostly have offers from rubbish sites that show good prices and then you get a huge CC bill.

yomly 9 years ago |

Whoa huge news - great bit of business for a UK tech company.

kleiba 9 years ago |

Question: what's going to happen to the personal data of previous customers? Can they easily (read: legally) be moved out of the EU to China?

whistleblowr786 9 years ago |

Wouldnt it be considered a conflict of interest if the original founder of Ctrip Neil Shen, later invests in Skyscanner as a Sequoia VC-raises its valuation and then gets it acquired by Ctrip.

robk 9 years ago | |

CoI to whom? Ctrip I assume? I don't think China really recognizes that concept in business from what I've been able to ascertain.

kilroy123 9 years ago |

As an American, I find there are better tools for finding domestic flights. However, for international flights, Skyscanner is always my go to tool.

smnscu 9 years ago | |

I've been using Google Flights exclusively since it was released, I love the UX.

switch007 9 years ago | | |

Just FYI, it's good for finding routes/times and indicative pricing, but sometimes going to the airline's website can yield savings of hundreds of £s (I've personally encountered this >10 times this year on non-LCC long haul routes).

batiudrami 9 years ago | |

Yeah SkyScanner is easily the best for international flights. Obviously in most countries a locally based competitor is going to be better for domestic flights.

tiatia 9 years ago | |

Really? I always was not impressed. I use vayama.com and dohop.com

JoshTriplett 9 years ago | |

I tend to use Hipmunk for both domestic and international flights; I haven't seen anything that comes close to Hipmunk's UI for presenting flights. What's the main advantage of Skyscanner?

dageshi 9 years ago | | |

My impression is coverage, skyscanner appears to have pricing from a huge number of sites/resellers which is important because in my experience the same flights from different sites can have significant discounts over each other.

I've tried using other sites before and while the UI on hipmunk is nice my experience was that skyscanner normally found options which were cheaper or didn't show up at all.

But I live in the UK and typically I'm booking long haul to Asia, I don't know if the situation is different elsewhere in the world or if perhaps skyscanner is concentrating on the UK market as its home market to an extent.

mllobet 9 years ago | | |

Himpmunk uses Skyscanner's API for international flights.

samfisher83 9 years ago |

Do they use ITA as their back end software?

benjaminRRR 9 years ago | |

SkyScanner is not an agency, they use other players to provide the content and fulfil the product so they'd have no use for ITA.

diakritikal 9 years ago | | |

My understanding is there's a heavy amount of scraping involved.

Torn 9 years ago | |

Nope, it's currently a meta-search that owns its own data layer. As to what the future will bring let's see!

freddyc 9 years ago |

Loved using Skyscanner when I lived in the UK - great news for them!

amelius 9 years ago |

Any people here who know how Skyscanner compares to Google Flights?

Marazan 9 years ago |

Well, that's a surprise

JamiePrentice 9 years ago |

Congrats Skyscanner!

toomuchstuff 9 years ago |

Ctrip, a Chinese corporation

grzm 9 years ago | |

Business is increasingly global. Deals of this nature are not so surprising. Would you expand on your comment?

toomuchstuff 9 years ago | | |

So if Twitter were bought by a Chinese company it would be the same as being bought by a British company?