Permira-Backed Engine Buys Options Travel to Build Corporate Booking Tool

Skift Take Engine is a startup that spent a decade selling hotel rooms to businesses that never hired a travel management company for help. Now it's just bought a TMC, and plans to build the booking software it thinks all business travelers should use. Engine built a business by serving business travelers who book most of their own travel. Now it's buying a travel management company (TMC), one of the agencies that corporations pay to negotiate rates and book their employees' travel. The Denver-based startup has bought Options Travel, a U.S. agency that had about $408 million in gross sales volume last year. The companies didn't disclose deal terms. Engine already had about 1,000 employees and had raised $140 million in Series C funding in 2024 in a round led by private equity firm Permira. Engine's growth had come from the unmanaged side: workers at firms with no for