Easyvoyage, Europe’s second largest travel portal, has acquired leading UK price comparison and travel deals website, dealchecker.co.uk. The move aims to strengthen Easyvoyage’s position as a top travel referral website.

Created in 2005 by Alex Saint, Troy Collins and Andrew Bredon, dealchecker.co.uk offers search engines for flights, hotels, holiday packages and car hire. The company also provides a weekly selection of great, hand-picked travel offers known as Real Deals - to its one million newsletter subscribers.

Easyvoyage also announced it has acquired top German price comparison website, TravelJungle, operating in Germany, France and the UK, and online e-marketing agency FSI, which manages four million active subscribers. As a result of these three acquisitions, which total just over 10 million Euros, in 2011 Easyvoyage estimates that it will generate 800 million Euros worth of travel sales for its clients.

Founded in June 2000 by Jean Pierre Nadir, Easyvoyage is a travel portal offering editorial content, price comparison, hotel reviews, travel deals and a community forum. The group covers the five main European markets; France, UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, and has 3.4 million unique users per month – an average of 10 million unique users annually***. Easyvoyage also has eight million active newsletter subscribers in Europe, boasting the largest number of newsletter subscribers for a travel portal in Europe.

Jean Pierre Nadir, founder and CEO of the Easyvoyage Group, said: “We’re incredibly pleased to have made these important additions to our business which have reinforced our leading position. Our footprint already reaches 21 per cent of travel internet users in the world, and these new acquisitions provide a great worldwide growth potential. We have ambitious expansion plans for the UK and we aim to achieve one billion Euros worth of sales to our partners in 2012. We also hope to grow our UK email database to 7 million subscribers in 2013.”

Alex Saint, CEO, dealchecker.co.uk, which ranks among the top five travel comparison sites in the UK, comments: “We felt that Easyvoyage was a great fit for our business and for the team here. Easyvoyage is fast becoming Europe’s leading travel search and information business and we believe that dealchecker.co.uk will flourish within that environment.”

Troy Collins, Commercial Director, dealchecker.co.uk, adds: “There’s clearly a very strong similarity of approach between the two teams. We’re both focused on providing a quality audience to our advertising partners and the combined business will have a terrific client base.”

Gereon Krahn, TravelJungle, said: “Easyvoyage is a proven market leader, with vision, technological leadership and unique approach to metasearch. Partnering with EasyVoyage will help us to grow the TravelJungle historic brand in the UK and Europe, and combine the strengths of one of the first meta-searches with highly topical content.”

Thomas Thiollier, FSI Travel, said: “We believe this is a fantastic opportunity to join one of the European market leaders in database monetisation with a clear focus on the travel sector. This move fits our strategy to become one of the leading email marketers in the UK.”