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Online global travel network TravelShark has
acquired eat.shop guides, an international publisher of
independent, local travel guides for the world’s top travel
destinations.
The acquisition gives TravelShark eat.shop’s
visually powerful, curated content related to thousands of unique
dining and shopping venues in 30 cities around the world.
TravelShark will retain the book business, and will extend the
success of eat.shop guides by exposing the print content for the
first time in the digital realm.
TravelShark plans
to expand the reach of the business with the addition of 100 new
cities in the next year. The company will also integrate eat.shop’s content into its major-market websites, a range of new
travel products it is developing in the area of trip planning, and
new mobile applications designed for travelers who enjoy
discovering the local flavor of a destination on their smartphones
and tablets.
“TravelShark is excited to be at the
forefront of the trend favoring original content in travel, most
recently reflected by Google’s acquisition of Zagat,” said Sue
Heilbronner, TravelShark’s CEO. “Web users are craving curated,
original content about unique places to see on their next trip,
and eat.shop’s content – which has never appeared online – fills a
void for travelers weary of seeing the same old repurposed online
content when they are researching their next vacation.”
Launched in 2006 by founder and CEO Kaie Wellman, eat.shop
guides has print distribution in bookstores and gift stores around
the world. In addition, the company has grown a private-label
publishing business, creating branded editions of its city guides
for large companies and hotel chains.
As part of the acquisition,
Wellman joins TravelShark as Head Curator and will continue to
develop this brand of content for print and online
under the eat.shop brand and TravelShark’s new “As a Local”
sub-brand.
“TravelShark is the ideal partner for the next
phase of eat.shop guides’ growth,” said Wellman. “My team has been
extremely successful in building this brand through a network of
talented travel editors who research, write, and photograph,
giving travelers an amazing sense of place and discovery. TravelShark allows us to leverage what we’ve created in more
markets and in new digital and mobile channels that we look
forward to exploring.”
Terms of the transaction
were not disclosed.
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