Provide the global 'Tours and Activities' market with a credible alternative to industry leaders like Tripadvisor's 'Viator' and 'GetYourGuide'.

How did the founders of City Discovery capitalize on the 'Big Bang' in the tourist excursion market to maximize their personal wealth?

Sébastien Caudron, a French digital entrepreneur in Southeast Asia, introduced Emmanuel Issaurat, CEO of CITY DISCOVERY, to Positive Capital. Founded in 2016 and based in France, City Discovery is a marketplace offering 9,000 activities, tours, and airport transfers. Positive Capital supported the founders in their search for financial partners to drive growth. Following TripAdvisor’s acquisition of Viator and major investments in Zozi and GetYourGuide, City Discovery was acquired by Veltra in February 2016 to expand in Europe and the Americas.

City-Discovery.com is an online booking service offering access to over 5,000 guided tours and activities in 400 destinations. Available in 18 languages, the company operates offices in the United States, France, Italy, Greece, and the Philippines.

While this tourism segment is estimated to represent €150 billion globally each year, few tourism professionals anticipated the success of urban tourism—a market ultimately highly complementary to travel purchases.

And yet, they are either acquired at a high price or consolidate.

Global players include Booking and TripAdvisor (which spent €200 million to acquire Viator, the oldest company in the sector), along with unicorns like Klook, offering 50,000 activities from 5,000 partners in over 200 destinations worldwide, raising $720 million to date (see Crunchbase). GetYourGuide, a serious competitor expanding into the U.S., recently partnered with Expedia, raising a total of $886.2 million to date (see Crunchbase).

Considering this clash of titans, we guided the founders through a competitive transfer process, highlighting to qualified potential buyers the opportunity to acquire a strategic asset in this global market, thereby securing extremely favorable bargaining power for the owners of City Discovery.

Following a competitive M&A process, the prominent Japanese tour operator Veltra made an irresistible offer, enabling the founders to maximize their personal wealth.