Webjet: how a 1998 online travel agency was spun back out of the WebBeds empire it created
Webjet has one of those corporate histories where the brand is older than the company that currently carries it.
The Webjet name dates back to 1998, when the Australian online travel agency was founded as one of the country’s early internet booking businesses. But the Webjet Group listed on the ASX today is a much newer legal entity, created in 2024 when the consumer travel businesses were separated from the much larger WebBeds operation.
That demerger is the key to understanding modern Webjet. The old Webjet Limited became Web Travel Group and kept WebBeds. The newly listed Webjet Group inherited the consumer-facing Webjet OTA, the Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic businesses, and Trip Ninja. The familiar brand survived, but the corporate structure underneath it changed completely.
Webjet started as an Australian online travel agency in 1998
Webjet was established in 1998 by David Clarke during the first wave of online travel booking in Australia. The early proposition was straightforward: give consumers a way to compare and book flights online rather than relying entirely on travel agents or airline call centres.
The company built its name around comparison tools and travel aggregation. By 2004, Webjet was bringing multiple travel products together for consumers and developing matrix-style fare displays designed to make comparison easier.
Those tools mattered because air travel pricing is rarely simple. Different airlines, fare classes, dates and route combinations can produce very different prices for what looks like the same journey. Webjet’s value came from reducing the amount of searching a traveller had to do manually.
David Clarke remained an executive director until 2011, when he retired as managing director. By then, Webjet had already moved from a pioneering Australian booking site into a sizeable public travel company.
The consumer business kept adding technology
Webjet continued adding tools that made online booking more convenient. Deal Finder and fare alerts arrived during the 2000s, an iOS app followed in 2009, and the business began moving more of its infrastructure into the cloud from 2011.
The company also experimented with new payment and loyalty options. Its product development reflected a wider shift in travel: customers increasingly expected search, comparison, payment and itinerary management to happen inside one digital experience.
Webjet’s strength in Australia and New Zealand remained the foundation of the consumer business. The company later tried to extend that model further into Asia, including through the 2013 acquisition of Zuji, which operated online travel businesses in markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore.
A side business eventually became bigger than the original idea
The most important strategic change in Webjet’s history began in 2013, when the old Webjet Limited launched a business-to-business hotel distribution operation in Dubai called Lots of Hotels.
That business served travel companies rather than consumers. Instead of helping an individual traveller book a room, the B2B operation supplied hotel inventory to other travel sellers around the world.
Over time, the B2B division expanded through acquisitions and became WebBeds. Its economics were very different from Webjet OTA. WebBeds operated as a global wholesale marketplace connecting accommodation suppliers with travel buyers, while Webjet remained a consumer booking brand focused mainly on Australia and New Zealand.
The B2B operation eventually became large enough that the original consumer business was no longer the dominant part of the group that still carried the Webjet name.
Trip Ninja added itinerary technology to the consumer business
Webjet also invested in travel technology intended to improve complicated flight searches. Trip Ninja specialises in software for complex itineraries, including multi-stop and international journeys where combining fares can produce better routing or pricing.
Trip Ninja technology was deployed on Webjet OTA from 2022. The purpose was not to create another consumer brand, but to improve the booking engine underneath Webjet by finding combinations that a simpler return-flight search might miss.
This made Trip Ninja strategically useful even though it remained much smaller financially than the OTA. It gave Webjet a proprietary technology layer that could improve the core consumer product rather than relying entirely on standard travel-search tools.
By 2024 the group contained two very different companies
Before the demerger, Webjet Limited contained both the consumer businesses and WebBeds. By then, the two sides had diverged sharply.
WebBeds was a global B2B travel-distribution platform serving trade customers across many markets. Webjet OTA and the vehicle-rental businesses were consumer-facing brands operating with different marketing needs, customer economics and growth priorities.
The board concluded that keeping both operations inside one listed company was no longer the best structure. Management argued that independent boards, management teams and capital structures would allow each side to pursue its own strategy more clearly.
Shareholders approved the separation on 17 September 2024. The demerger was implemented on 30 September.
The old Webjet became Web Travel Group
The demerger created an important naming trap.
The company that had historically been called Webjet Limited kept the WebBeds B2B business and changed its name to Web Travel Group Limited. It continues to trade on the ASX under the code WEB.
The consumer operations were transferred into a newly created company called Webjet Group Limited, which trades under the ASX code WJL.
That means today’s Webjet Group is not simply the old Webjet Limited with a business sold off. Legally, it is the new entity created for the consumer assets. Historically, however, it carries the 1998 Webjet OTA lineage.
Any company history that ignores this distinction risks mixing two different listed businesses after September 2024.
The new Webjet Group contains three main travel businesses
The post-demerger Webjet Group is built around Webjet OTA, Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic, and Trip Ninja.
Webjet OTA remains the best-known operation, focused on online consumer travel booking in Australia and New Zealand. Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic operate global online vehicle-rental businesses, giving the group exposure to car and motorhome bookings rather than flights alone.
Trip Ninja supplies travel-search technology for complex itineraries. Its role has increasingly shifted toward strengthening the wider Webjet technology stack instead of being treated as a large standalone revenue business.
That portfolio is much more focused than the pre-demerger company. It is a consumer travel and travel-technology group rather than a combination of consumer booking and global B2B hotel distribution.
Business travel became a new growth pillar in 2026
Webjet Group moved back into another part of the travel market through the acquisition of Locomote, a corporate travel technology platform.
The business was relaunched as Webjet Business Travel. Management said the acquisition accelerated its business-travel strategy by about three years compared with building the capability internally.
Business travel changes the economics of the group because corporate customers can generate higher-value and more recurring bookings than occasional leisure travellers. It also gives Webjet another way to use its booking infrastructure and brand beyond the consumer OTA.
In FY2026, Webjet Business Travel contributed A$1.2 million of revenue during its initial period of consolidation. The operation was still in investment mode and recorded an EBITDA loss of A$0.6 million for that period.
Trip Ninja is being folded deeper into Webjet
Trip Ninja remained small as a standalone financial contributor in FY2026 and reported an EBITDA loss of about A$3.1 million.
Rather than abandoning the technology, Webjet Group decided to integrate Trip Ninja more closely into Webjet OTA from FY2027. Management said the team would operate as an internal centre of excellence for artificial intelligence and travel technology.
The move makes strategic sense because Trip Ninja’s strongest value may lie inside Webjet’s own search and pricing systems rather than in building a large independent software business.
It is another example of how Webjet is using technology as infrastructure beneath the booking experience rather than as a separate consumer product.
FY2026 was a transition year rather than a clean growth year
For the financial year ended 31 March 2026, Webjet Group recorded 1.431 million bookings and total transaction value of A$1.457 billion.
Revenue reached A$136.4 million, up slightly from A$135.3 million a year earlier. Underlying EBITDA fell to A$28.1 million from A$35 million as the company increased investment in marketing, technology and talent while dealing with softer travel conditions.
Statutory net profit after tax was A$3.7 million, while underlying NPAT was A$13.6 million. The group ended the year with A$93.9 million in net cash and no borrowings.
The balance sheet gives Webjet room to invest, but the FY2026 results also show the challenge. Bookings fell 7% and TTV declined 3%, so the next phase of growth depends on improving the customer proposition rather than relying only on a travel-market rebound.
The OTA is being rebuilt around higher-value travel
Webjet Group relaunched the Webjet OTA brand during FY2026 and adjusted product and pricing strategy to capture a greater share of international travel.
International bookings are attractive because individual transactions can carry higher values than short domestic journeys. The company has also been adding ancillary products such as paid airline seating and improving marketing systems intended to support cross-selling and more personalised communication.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly part of this work, but mainly behind the scenes. Webjet says it is using AI across product development, engineering, customer experience and operations to shorten development cycles and reduce costs.
The goal is not to turn Webjet into an AI company. It is to make the travel-booking operation more efficient and more useful.
The Webjet name survived because the consumer business still mattered
The history of Webjet is unusual because the company that created the brand eventually became dominated by a different business.
Webjet OTA started in 1998 and helped establish online travel booking in Australia. The old parent then built WebBeds into a global B2B business so large and strategically different that the two sides were separated in 2024.
The result is two listed companies with a shared corporate past. Web Travel Group carries the old legal entity and WebBeds. Webjet Group carries the original consumer brand, vehicle-rental businesses and travel technology.
That split gives the modern Webjet a clearer job than the pre-2024 group. It no longer needs to balance a global wholesale accommodation platform against a consumer booking site. It can focus on making the Webjet brand more valuable to travellers, building business travel and using Trip Ninja’s technology more deeply inside its own products.
In that sense, the 2024 demerger did not end Webjet’s history. It separated the original idea from the much larger business that had grown beside it and gave the consumer brand its own listed company again.
