The last 10 years have seen an interesting development: with cheaper IT infrastructure, faster internet, and ever-growing IT resources (both manpower and in technology), a number of specialized travel technology providers have emerged, offering clients an “all-in-one” solution for their IT needs. (Little note: in my experience this usually means a travel technology provider can cover about 80% of a client’s real needs… while the rest requires bespoke in-house or outsourced work 😉)
Many of these companies were founded by former GDS- or travel-supply (airlines, hotels, etc.) professionals who identified a crucial gap in technology. Companies often found that building solutions in-house was simply too costly to develop, too expensive to maintain, or beyond their technical expertise to begin with.
And so, SaaS entered the travel industry—bringing with it high double-digit annual growth rates for the top players in the field. (I witnessed this firsthand when I managed third-party technology partnerships at Expedia’s B2B division until 2019.)
For a while, almost everyone was thriving. The parties were fabulous (Note: ConX still is!), and the future looked incredibly bright… until the pandemic hit. Practically overnight, the entire industry came to a standstill, and tech players had to grapple with the harsh reality of having the rug pulled out from under them. (Having spoken to many senior leaders and company owners over the past few years, I’ve heard astonishing stories of the sheer effort it took just to keep their businesses afloat.)
“Cash is king”, they say—and this is especially true in travel technology. Great talent comes at a cost, cloud services provide high-performance solutions, but that engine burns cash. And let’s not forget the less glamorous but essential expenses: taxes, office rent, software licenses, back-office staff, etc.
The pandemic simply accelerated an inevitable trend: an oversupply of technology solutions had already begun driving a race to the bottom. In response, more and more fees were waived just to keep clients on board. (And travel technology companies can get very creative with fees—maintenance fees, upgrade fees, second-level support fees, basic traffic fees, volume-based fees, transaction-based fees, transaction override fees… the list goes on!) This, in turn, created immense cash-flow pressures as administrative costs soared—a challenge that any rapidly growing business inevitably faces.
Ready, Player One…
The seeds of what would shape the Post-Covid travel tech landscape were actually sown as early as 2014, when Canada’s software conglomerate Constellation Software acquired Mallorca-based Juniper Travel Group.
At the time, I vividly remember the news sending shockwaves through the industry. The deep pockets of Constellation Software (backed by the Canadian Pension Fund), combined with the outstanding Mallorcian entrepreneurial spirit of Jaime Sastre (who had already conquered much of the Spanish-speaking world on his own), set the stage for Juniper Travel Group’s rise to the forefront of travel technology SaaS companies. In a first step Brazil was targeted by acquistion of Cangooroo/T4W in 2017 to further round off the overall push into the South American markets, where the Juniper Travel brand was already operating successfully.
However, the real game-changer came in 2021: the further transformation of Juniper Travel Group into a true venture capital vehicle—still led by Jaime, but now in an upgraded and redefined role. The newly evolved group certainly seized all the post-Covid opportunities at an astonishing pace, acquiring top-tier technology players in the tourism and hospitality sectors in almost monthly fashion; this expansion continues to this day, with recent acquisitions like Traveltek and InterRes adding more depth to the portfolio.
Player Two enters the arena
Whilst a lot of eyes were set on Juniper/Constellation, another player emerged across the Mediterranean sea. Lead by entrepreneur extraordinaire Christian Sabbagh, and firmly rooted in France, the Travelsoft Group has emerged in recent years.
Christians success stemmed from his core brand Orchestra, who became one of the main backends from OTAs and Tour Operators in France in the 2010’s, starting out from a basic booking platform but transforming itself into a full end-to-end solution (front-office/back-office/packaging etc), putting himself in a comfortable market control situation in France over the years.
Travelsoft was also able to capitalize on the post-Covid market consolidation by first acquiring the Germany-based flight aggregator Traffics, followed then by a major push in end of 2023 and 2024 to pick up some of the very finest travel technology SaaS available on the market.
While Travelsoft does have some external backing via Capza Group (with an minority-stake investment in 2023), a lot of the acquisition here seems to be bootstrapped on the core financial performance of the already existing Travelsoft company.
And now by Mid-2025 we truly have a “Coca Cola vs Pepsi Cola” competition unfolding in the travel space, which is intriguing on its own already. But let’s take a deeper look what actually makes those companies “Mega SaaS” approach so interesting in the next section.
The distinct advantages of “Mega SaaS” in travel
Whilst there is also another strong trend on the travel market which is a lot more Private Equity (PE) companies now getting involved in the travel market to acquire undervalued companies, streamline their operations/expenses and firmly planning exits in 3-5 years time frames, this scenario seems to be not fitting for Juniper or Travelsoft; it rather seems that a future “value creation via scalability” path is firmly pursued.
Here are four sample points where I can see this happening already:
- Portfolio Sales for teams across brands
The most immediate impact of the group setups is simply super-scaling the sales teams of the individual brands. It gives the teams the chance to offer a “full buffet” of different options (products/geography/focus) when they go into client pitches. Now, this does not work on its own and thorough training is still needed for proper selling of solutions that fit the respective client needs – but it also helps to carry on conversations which might have been a “you guys are great, but your solution is not the fit we are looking for“.Also, a simply an larger overall sales force creates more reach instantly across the board and creates simply more leads on its own already. - Talent management and retention
Having great talent is an asset for any company. But those people also might look for different career paths/changes over time and losing that talent also becomes costly. Having different sub-companies allows talent to rotate around, try out new things, new career paths… or simply pool top talent for high-value projects across the brands!That also goes for leadership positions where especially Juniper is moving around some of their top-tier talent to get more experience in different companies, geographies and products – making them even more valuable long term contributors to the company. - Financing, Contracting and Marketing
Although both companies seem to keep their companies fairly independent when it comes down to strategies and their own P&L, it is likely to be expected that the bigger group power can create some leverage with financial partners to get better terms.Also, simplifying contracting processes via common shared standards allows further scalability on how resources are used across the company (likely resulting in a long-term “Corporate HQ” core business functions scenario where a lot of the “back of the house” functions become shared resources to create better efficiency and alignment). - Training and large-scale Up-skilling
A lot of SaaS companies in the travel space are based on a very organically built, with their very much own homegrown work culture and bespoke processes. In order though to be able to scale a company, at a certain point the “you need to become more corporate” is often unfortunately a must. Here, training and specific programmes (Junipers own “Good Practices Book“, which is named publicly, is a good example for that) allows a very “franchise”-like approach to scale the back office.And not all skill sets/understandings of employees across the brands are the same: proactively bringing everyone to the same page/standards avoids a lot of friction later on when the companies start to collaborate more closely together. In turn this then creates a better consistent customer experience for multi-brand users and of course the overall reputation of the group.
There are further benefits that I possibly can name, but I think it would be premature to start listing them already. In reality both groups in its recent size are only 2 two years old and you could call that “early days” still.
Thus it will be exciting to watch the further story to unfold over the coming years – and if there might be a “Coca Cola” here who then takes it all…
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