Holiday Autos

Holiday Autos is a car hire aggregation company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. It compares car hire prices to help customers book the best price.

History

In 1988, Holiday Autos was founded by Clive Jacobs and Nick Stolberg, based in Surrey, in the UK. Holiday Autos was the first fully transactional online car rental business, transacting nine million rental days and with revenues in excess of £200 million through a distribution network spanning 30 countries.

In 1995, co-founder Nick Stolberg sold his stake in Holiday Autos to Clive Jacobs for an estimated £6m Holiday Autos was making revenues of £29 million and was mainly focused on the UK market. Mr. Stolberg went on to set up rival firm Autos Abroad.

In 2003, Lastminute bought Holiday Autos for £16 million and Clive Jacobs became vice-chairman of Lastminute until 2004.

In 2005, Lastminute was acquired by Sabre Holdings, owner of the Travelocity online travel business.

In 2013, Etrawler Unlimited Company, an Irish registered company trading as CarTrawler, announced the acquisition of the online assets of Holiday Autos from Travelocity Global for an undisclosed sum. CarTrawler did not acquire the Surrey-based operations, only the online assets - Holiday Autos brand, Holiday Autos URLs and domain names, and the underpinning B2B2C commercial agreements. CarTrawler headquarters and customer centre are located in Dublin, Ireland, with offices in Boston, London and Helsinki.