EDINBURGH, Scotland—Global travel search site Skyscanner has acquired Fogg, a Barcelona-based company focused on making internet hotel search simpler and faster.
The acquisition is a significant step in Skyscanner’s strategy of expanding its travel offering into other important areas of its users’ travel plans. Skyscanner’s proprietary flight search product has over 25 million downloads.
Skyscanner will integrate the Fogg hotel search into its site by the end of the year. Currently available in English and Spanish, the service will be expanded to power Skyscanner’s markets around the globe in 30 languages, and will see a further increase in hotel coverage. Skyscanner is also opening a new office in Barcelona, where all five of Fogg’s full-time staff will be based. Skyscanner will build out that office to welcome additional hires in engineering and other disciplines.
“Our users are going to love hotel search as a result of this acquisition,” said Gareth Williams, Skyscanner’s chief executive officer. “We built the best flight search product anywhere in the world. We then expanded that offering into car rental. And today we’ve taken a big step towards completing the picture in the space of hotel search.”
The company has also recently launched a car rental engine in 200 markets around the world, also built from the ground-up. Today’s acquisition of Fogg sees Skyscanner fast-track a proprietary offering in the complex space of hotel meta-search.
Skyscanner’s acquisition comes at a time when it is also moving rapidly into the Americas, including the US, Canada and Latin American markets. The company has just opened a Miami hub office for the Americas region and is working to build business in the US and other Americas markets.
