Yatra.com, a leading online travel agency and travel search engine based in India, has acqui-hired Travel-Logs – a popular website for exploring and booking customised city walks and private tours.
Dhiresh Sharma, the founder of Travel-Logs, will associate with Yatra as head of its new segment called Metro X. This new feature will accumulate travel experiences across different Indian cities based on different themes like culture & heritage, art & architecture etc. It will be launched in Mumbai by the end of February and expand in other metro cities later. In 2014, Travel-Logs conducted a tour of South Mumbai for the Asia Business Council. Famous personalities like Pheroza Godrej, wife of Jamshyd Godrej, chairman of Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co Ltd, and Gerard Kleisterlee, global chairman of Vodafone participated in the event. Similarly, Travel-Logs has carried out innumerable successful tours for corporates and educational institutions in Mumbai. This might be one of the reasons why Metro X will be launched in this city.
According to the article, Sharat Dhall, President of Yatra.com, stated the reason behind the acqui-hire:
“It is about experiencing your own city and the idea is to curate all the experience in a metro – whether it is cycling tours, walking tours, food trail, etc – which is available within the city.”
On the other hand, Dhiresh Sharma elaborated on the experiences offered by Travel-Logs:
“People who live in the city should be able to see value in the city and this is what drives us. We try to create value out of the age-old heritage and culture, which not many people know.”
For the past few years, many travel companies are acqui-hiring others because they need certain skills and expertise as per their business requirements. Last year, ixigo acqui-hired Desi Backpacking Travelers to expand its services and HolidayIQ acqui-hired SourceN India Pvt to boost up the mobile offering.
We have seen the trend that Yatra.com is exploring new business verticals. It has already started offering homestay accommodation under the brand ‘TG stays’. Also, it provides a unique marketplace for holiday packages from offline travel operators. It can be said that by associating with different companies and specifically Travel-Logs, Yatra.com plans to offer trippers a richer experience of different cities with a wide variety of stay options and activities.
How successfully will Yatra and Travel-Logs perform together in the travel industry is yet to be seen.
Also Read: Yatra launches TG Rooms & TG Stays, but is it too late?
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