Skyscanner Ltd. is a British search aggregator and travel agency based in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

and operating since 2002.

History

The company was formed by three

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

professionals. The Edinburgh office was opened in 2004. In 2009, the year after SEP invested in the business, Skyscanner reported its first profit. In 2011, Skyscanner acquired Zoombu. Skyscanner opened an office in Singapore in September 2011, which is headquarters for its Asia-Pacific operations. In 2012, a Beijing office was added, as Skyscanner began a partnership with

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

, China's largest search engine. By 2013, the company employed over 180 people. In February 2013, Skyscanner announced plans to open a United States base in

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

. In October 2013,

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

purchased an interest in Skyscanner that valued the company at $800 million. In June 2014, Skyscanner acquired Youbibi, a travel search engine company based in

Shenzhen Shenzhen is a prefecture-level city in the province of Guangdong, China. A Special economic zones of China, special economic zone, it is located on the east bank of the Pearl River (China), Pearl River estuary on the central coast of Guangdong ...

, China. By February 2015, the company employed 600 people, double the employment of 18 months earlier. In January 2016, the company raised $192 million based on a $1.6 billion valuation for the company. In November 2016, a Chinese company Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip) bought Skyscanner for $1.75 billion. Following the sale to Ctrip, Skyscanner's largest shareholder, SEP, completed its exit from the business. In 2017, Ctrip bought the Trip.com domain and launched Trip.com. The original platform became a subsidiary of Skyscanner. In 2020, after the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, the company announced that it would lay off 300 employees (20% of its staff). It was likely to close two offices in

Budapest, Hungary Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

and

Sofia, Bulgaria Sofia is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the western part of the country. The city is built west of the Is ...

. In May 2025, the company announced the appointment of Bryan Batista, its chief operations officer, as its new chief executive replacing John Mangelaars. Batista will take up the role from 1 June 2025.

References

External links

{{Travel ticket search engines Trip.com Group Metasearch engines Travel ticket search engines Universal Windows Platform apps British travel websites British companies established in 2002 Transport companies established in 2002 Internet properties established in 2002 2016 mergers and acquisitions British subsidiaries of foreign companies Companies based in Edinburgh 2002 establishments in Scotland

History

See also

References

External links