Busbud, a Canadian-based travel booking platform, has acquired Ratality, a South Africa-based revenue management optimization software in an expansion drive.
The acquisition extends Busbu’s reach in Africa and will enhance Busbud’s advanced demand forecasting, dynamic pricing, fleet and driver management, among others and builds upon an existing partnership between the companies.
According to LP Maurice, CEO & Co-founder of Busbud, “We’ve heard first-hand from ground travel operators the tangible results they’ve achieved by using Ratality to generate more revenue for their businesses. We were extremely impressed by the technology and capabilities of their platform. It just really made sense to bring Ratality’s team of revenue management experts on board and integrate these features further into our core B2B platform.”
BusBud will make Ratality’s capabilities accessible to its operator partners worldwide. Busbud Business Suite offers B2B business services to ground travel operators to help manage their operations more efficiently and expand their sales to the online market. The suite is used by over 350 partners worldwide and has powered hundreds of millions of tickets worldwide to date.
This acquisition follows the 2022 merger with Betterez, a leading B2B reservation & ticketing management platform. Busbud supports a multitude of payment and language options and has been configured in 16 countries, acting as a trusted partner for many operators including 4 of the top 5 in South Africa.
“Uniting with Busbud expands the reach of our platform to bus operators around the world,” said Arend de Waal, CEO & Co-founder of Ratality. “Our innovative revenue management solutions generate immediate ROI for our partners and have already been proven in other travel sectors like airlines. Overall, this combination unlocks untapped potential for bus operators, maximizing revenue and operational efficiency.”
The addition of revenue management capabilities to the Business Suite is another major win as Ratality’s revenue management capabilities unlock a whole new level of efficiency and economics for operator partners.
One of Ratality’s customers, a large South African-based ground travel operator, saw a major impact on sales and efficiency: 73% more passengers, 76% improvement in seat factor (SF%), 37% improvement in revenue, and 32% increase in revenue per kilometer (RPK). This impact happened only over several months, from November 2023 to February 2024