With this acquisition, CDS Group claims the position of European leader in hotel reservation solutions for individual and group corporate clients. The group had previously been operating in France, with a few opportunistic forays into Germany, Italy, Spain and Benelux through its key account clients.
The company, co-founded in 2001 by Ziad Minkara, centralises technology, information and services to enable seamless booking of accommodation for corporate clients and groups.
This acquisition aligns the interests of the two protagonists, allowing CDS Group to strengthen its presence in its core business by integrating Rydoo's tools, while Rydoo intends to focus on the expense management side by concentrating 100% of its resources on it. The travel expense division will remain under the control of the investment fund Marlin Equity, which acquired a majority stake in Rydoo from Sodexo last September.
"The acquisition of Rydoo Travel by CDS Group is perfectly in line with our strategy of accelerating the company's growth by strengthening its French leadership and consolidating its technology. The complementary nature of the company's positioning and customer portfolio will enable the new entity to achieve a potential business volume of €500 million, making it the de facto European leader in hotel reservation solutions for business travel. We are excited to welcome the entire Rydoo Travel team. The group will now have 150 employees, including around 60 developers. Their in-depth knowledge of the IT services sector will help accelerate the growth of the CDS Group's offering. [...] We will capitalise by investing in all the solutions developed by Rydoo Travel, both the Self Booking Tool and the Hotel Booking Tool, in order to enable our strategic partner agencies to offer innovative solutions in the face of new international competition. We will thus be the only French independent and agnostic player with the capacity to provide all the essential tools to the current TMCs to serve their Corporate and Public Sector clients" explains Ziad Minkara, co-founder and CEO of CDS Group.
Pierre Mesnage, who joined the Rydoo adventure in 2018 via Sodexo, will be in charge of the new travel division of CDS Group.
Ziad Minkara seized the opportunity to acquire Rydoo Travel in order to change scale and expand its market area. The next few weeks will be devoted to the integration of 60 developers who will enable the tool to accelerate its development and to offer even more functionalities for its agency, key account and individual clients. Technological bridges will also be put in place to allow the deployment of the new tools.
