Booking.com plans to acquire Sweden-based Etraveli Group, one of its flight-booking partners, from CVC Capital for €1.63B
Context & Ripple Effects
Booking.com's move follows the playbook Ctrip used when it bought Skyscanner for $1.74B in 2016 (the sector's template for OTA flight-search consolidation): a hotel-dominant platform buying its way into flight distribution rather than building it. Etraveli was already a Booking flight-booking partner, so the €1.63B purchase converts an existing supplier relationship into owned infrastructure.
The arc since has been turbulent: the UK's CMA cleared the deal in 2022, but sources reported the EU planned to block it over competition concerns (regulators moving against the deal), and the EU formally blocked it in September 2023, saying Booking failed to allay concerns the deal would expand its hotel-OTA dominance. Etraveli stayed independent — and by mid-2025 KKR took a significant minority valuing it around €2.7B (well above Booking's offer price).
First-order effects
- Booking.com gains control of a flight-booking engine serving tens of millions of users, deepening its flights offering beyond its hotel core; CVC Capital exits with the sale proceeds.
Second-order effects
- Rival OTAs face pressure to match the vertical integration — the Ctrip-Skyscanner deal showed flight search assets command premium prices once one platform owns them.
Third-order effects
- The EU's eventual block signals that antitrust review now treats a hotel-OTA leader's push into adjacent verticals as dominance extension, not diversification — raising the bar for platform M&A across travel, while Etraveli's higher KKR valuation suggests blocked targets can thrive standalone.
The trend: Travel platforms are consolidating flight distribution through acquisition, but EU antitrust is emerging as the binding constraint on how far a dominant OTA can extend vertically.