Irish Online travel service makes €18.3m profit
20th of October 2008 by admin
Web Reservations International (WRI), owner of the Hostelworld.com site, made a pre-tax profit of €18.3 million last year, as almost 83 million people visited its network of websites to book hostel accommodation around the world.
The SBPost article also has details on
WRI has about 90 staff, with overseas bases in Shanghai and Sydney. As well as Mooney and the co-founders, its directors include chairman Fintan Drury, former Aer Lingus chief financial officer Brian Dunne and Mark Opzoomer, the former managing director of Yahoo! in Europe.
The company was valued at about €400 million in 2004 when it raised external funding from Summit Partners, a US venture capital company. However, it bought back some of Summit Partners' shares in 2006 as part of a corporate restructuring.
The 2007 accounts show the firm paid €35 million to Summit Partners for those shares. As part of that process, a total of €12.2 million was paid to trusts owned by Nolan, Kennedy and fellow director Paddy Holahan, and a further €1.5 million was paid to WRI directors and key management.
Tags: web2ireland, webres