Travelmad, an Internet travel and booking company based in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, is seeking up to £16 million (€20 million) funding to expand its online reservation and travel site into Europe.
The company, which has established one of the largest interactive travel websites for Ireland at www.goireland.com, is set to launch in 18 European countries within months.
It has appointed investment firm English Trust to organise the funding and prepare for a possible initial public offering on the AIM stock exchange and the German Neuer Markt towards the end of next year.
Travelmad's Irish database makes some 75,000 pages of content available to users, and claims to have 11,000 accommodation outlets listed on its sites. It generates revenue by charging a 10 per cent commission on bookings.
Its website also offers customers access to a range of services including accommodation, car rental, genealogy, flight bookings and shopping.
Mr Alister Kidd, chief executive of Travelmad, said the firm's expansion would include compiling a pan-European database consisting of some 600,000 accommodation outlets.
He said the European service was being compiled on the same model as the Irish website and would launch in France, Germany, Spain and Italy before the end of the year.
The company currently employs 56 staff at its Letterkenny headquarters and call centre, which handles telephone reservations. Another 50 people are employed at the firm's Dublin software development centre.
Mr Kidd said he hoped to almost double employment at the company by the middle of next year and boost online bookings to some £34 million next year. He said the firm aimed to be profitable by 2002.
He added that the firm hoped to take on board a major US investor from within the Internet travel industry through this funding round to help it expand quickly.
To date the company has been funded by a number of investors including Donegal County Council, which has a 2 per cent equity stake, and a Dublin-based `angel' investor, Mr Jim Hawkes, who has a 70 per cent stake.
Other investors include Mr Jim McCrohan, a former managing partner of Amrop International Ireland, and Mr Kidd, who originally founded the firm under the name LeisureTel in 1990.
Travelmad, which was known as Goireland up to July this year, is engaged in a protracted legal dispute with Bord Failte. It alleges that Bord Failte is giving an unfair trading advantage to one of its rivals. This is denied by the state agency.
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