FRANCE: Rail, bus and air ticket booking platform Kombo has acquired multimodal travel price comparison website KelBillet.
‘Kombo has reached a stage of maturity that allows us to grow by acquiring other players’, said Matthieu Marquenet, who co-founded the company in 2016 since when it has grown to a team of 16 with the website receiving 1 million visits per month.
‘We had a very good contact with Yann Raoul, the founder of KelBillet. We co-developed a project to integrate Kombo’s technology into KelBillet. All in the interest of travellers.’
The KelBillet brand will be retained. Kombo said future plans include direct access to booking via Kombo for a smoother experience, broader coverage of transport operators and enhanced customer support, including in the event of delays or strikes.
‘This transaction will allow KelBillet to scale up and expand its range of services to go even further in serving travellers’, Raoul said on January 15
Kombo said the deal comes at a time when the European ground transport market is opening up to competition, with a proliferation of operators and growing passenger expectations for simplicity and transparency.
