EaseMyTrip acquires stake in a hospitality management company

Online travel platform EaseMyTrip NSE -0.51% announced on Thursday that it has acquired hospitality management company Spree Hospitality. This is EaseMyTrip's second acquisition. The company said Spree Hospitality will add a new revenue vertical for the company and enable it to scale up its hotel and holidays portfolio. Ease MyTrip said additionally, customers will be offered exclusive deals and offer on Spree Hospitality while doing bookings on EaseMyTrip. The company did not divulge the cost of the acquisition. Hospitality advisory firm Noesis Capital Advisors acted as the exclusive transaction advisor for the deal.

Spree was founded in 2011 by Keshav Baljee, who is also the co-promoter of a public listed company Royal Orchid Hotels. Spree has a portfolio spanning hospitality verticals such as hotels, corporate guest homes, and residential clubs. The company is debt-free and follows an asset-light model. Spree Hospitality has a footprint of 1220 operational keys and hotels in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Goa, Hyderabad, Kochi, Manali, Amritsar, Dehradun, Coimbatore, and Delhi, besides other locations.

Prashant Pitti, co-founder at EaseMyTrip said there is a synergy between Ease MyTrip and Spree Hospitality and the company leverages the asset-light model to build a lean and efficient infrastructure. "With this acquisition, we believe that EaseMyTrip is well-positioned to unlock the market potential of a recovering hospitality sector and quickly scale up the business to meet the evolving needs of the modern traveller," he said.

"We will enable Spree to expand to 200 properties in the next five years becoming one of the biggest names in the Indian hospitality sector," he added.

During the pandemic, Spree signed 18 new hotels and hired over 250 additional employees to support the expansion.