LEI:213800OC94PF2D675H41

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONTAINS INSIDE INFORMATION

Hostelworld Group plc ("Hostelworld" or the "Group")

Acquisition of OccasionGenius

Hostelworld enhances its social travel platform offering through the acquisition of OccasionGenius

Hostelworld is pleased to announce that it has acquired the entire issued share capital of OccasionGenius Inc. ("OccasionGenius"), a US-based B2B event discovery platform, for a total cash consideration of $12.0 million. 

OccasionGenius empowers businesses to inspire their audiences with a global event dataset delivered via API, comprising a rich, city-by-city catalogue of local 'Things to Do' and a unique global dataset of 'travel worthy' events that inspire travellers to book trips.

The company addresses the critical need for accurate, large-scale event information. Its unique, technology-based aggregation capabilities, supplemented with a human-curated approach, ensure details such as venues, dates, and times are reliable. This factual data is then enriched with inspirational descriptions, rights-cleared imagery, and extensive event metadata to create a comprehensive, marketing-ready content asset for their blue-chip clients.

Strategic Rationale for the Acquisition

The acquisition represents a natural progression of our growth strategy outlined at the Capital Markets Day in April 2025. It builds on the success of our social strategy, reinforcing our ambition to create the world's leading social travel platform. The acquisition accelerates the development of our events capability, giving us immediate access to structured, global event data; content that would otherwise take years to build organically. By integrating this at scale, we expand from accommodation into events, strengthen community connection, and advance our broader social monetisation strategy.

The strategic rationale is clear, compelling, and based on three key pillars:

·      Enhances our Social Travel Platform: By integrating a rich catalogue of local events, we give travellers more reasons to connect and explore together, creating an unrivalled platform to find not only a place to stay and people to meet, but also unforgettable things to do.

·      Accelerates our Growth and Monetisation: By showcasing major 'travel worthy' events, we can inspire new trips entirely, capturing travellers at the very beginning of their planning journey and driving growth in social members and bookings.

·      Creates a Unique Proprietary Data Asset: By combining our Social Graph and bookings data with this new layer of global event data, we are building a powerful, long-term strategic asset that will provide unique insights into traveller behaviour and drive future growth.

Once fully integrated, the new content will enhance the breadth and relevance of our platform, driving increased growth in Social members, bookings and Social Network revenues that collectively strengthen financial performance.

Occasion Genius will be acquired for a total cash consideration of $12.0m on a cash-free, debt-free basis (subject to customary closing adjustments). The consideration will be fully funded by a new €10.3m, 3-year term loan facility with Allied Irish Bank which will have an interest rate payable of 2.0% over EURIBOR. Hostelworld's leverage position remains comfortably below our target of 1.0x.

OccasionGenius is growing rapidly with forecasted annualised recurring revenue of €1.5m, by year end. Hostelworld's financial guidance for FY 2025 remains unchanged. The acquisition is aligned with our objectives as set out at our Capital Markets Day in April 2025.

Gary Morrison, Group Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"The acquisition of OccasionGenius is a significant development which positions Hostelworld as the first social travel platform with an integrated offering of social networking, event discovery and accommodation. This acquisition allows us to immediately supercharge our platform with a wealth of content that would take us years to build organically and enhances value creation opportunities for our shareholders."

MAR information

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of both the EU and UK versions of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU 596/2014) ("MAR"), which, in the case of the UK, is part of UK law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. For the purposes of MAR and Article 2 of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/1055 (in the case of the UK, as incorporated into UK law), this announcement is being made on behalf of the Company by Caroline Sherry, Chief Financial Officer.

For further information please contact:

Hostelworld Group plc                                                      Corporate@hostelworld.com

Gary Morrison, Chief Executive Officer

Caroline Sherry, Chief Financial Officer

David Brady, Head of Commercial Finance

Sodali & Co.                                                          hostelworld@sodali.com

Eavan Gannon / Oliver Banks                           Tel: +44 (0) 20 7250 1446

About Hostelworld Group

Hostelworld Group PLC is a ground‐breaking social network powered Online Travel Agent ("OTA") focused on the hostelling category, with a clear mission to help travellers find people to hang out with. Our mission statement is founded on the insight that most travellers go hostelling to meet other people, which we facilitate through a series of social features on our platform that connect our travellers in hostels and cities based on their booking data. The strategy has been extraordinarily successful, generating significant word of mouth recommendations from our customers and strong endorsements from our hostel partners.

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Ireland, Hostelworld is a well‐known trusted brand with almost 270 employees, hostel partners in over 180 countries, and a long‐standing commitment to building a better world. To that end, our focus over the last few years has been on improving the sustainability of the hostelling industry. In particular, over the last two years we have commissioned independent research to validate the category's sustainability credentials and recently introduced a hostel specific sustainability framework which encourages our hostel partners to move to even more sustainable operations and also provides the data points for our customers to make more informed decisions about where they stay. In addition, our customers are now able to offset their trip's carbon emissions should they wish to do so, and we have maintained our 'Taking Climate Action' label awarded by South Pole.

Disclaimer

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements relate to the future prospects, developments and business strategies of Hostelworld. Forward-looking statements are identified by the use of such terms as "believe", "could", "envisage", "estimate", "potential", "intend", "may", "plan", "will" or variations or similar expressions, or the negative thereof. Any forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by those statements. If one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if underlying assumptions prove incorrect, Hostelworld's actual results may vary materially from those expected, estimated or projected. Any forward-looking statements speak only as at the date of this announcement. Except as required by law, Hostelworld undertakes no obligation to publicly release any update or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained in this announcement to reflect any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statements are based after the time they are made.