PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN—Hotelbeds Group has sold its Destination Management division to TUI, a tourism group, as the continuation of Hotelbeds Group’s strategic focus on its bedbank core.
TUI will acquire all of the assets of this division for an enterprise value of €110 million (about $135 million), which represents Hotelbeds’ incoming services offering and is made up of three main global brands: Destination Services, Intercruises Shoreside & Port Services and Pacific World.
This move follows Hotelbeds Group doubling the size of its business by sales through the acquisitions during 2017 of Tourico Holidays and GTA, two bedbanks with a strong presence in North America and Asia-Pacific, respectively. Following the integration of these two bedbank brands into the group, there are now more than 170,000 hotels selling to over 60,000 travel intermediaries globally via the group´s proprietary B2B technology platform.
The transaction is subject to customary regulatory and anti-trust approvals.
“Today’s sale represents yet another important milestone for our group since becoming an independent business in September 2016. This simplified structure will enable us to focus fully on our bedbank core, where, following our recent acquisitions of Tourico Holidays and GTA, we are already a market-leading business innovating the hotel and ancillaries distribution chain via our best-in-class B2B technology platform,” said Joan Vilà, executive chairman of Hotelbeds Group.
“Our Destination Management division has been highly successful over the last 18 months, growing revenues significantly and enhancing its range of services. However, TUI recently approached us and after careful consideration we believe that this is in the best interests of all stakeholders: not least our employees and business partners,” Vilà continued. “TUI is well placed to continue the division’s growth trajectory, given its own core tour operator strategy as well as the longstanding and significant relationship between our two groups, with TUI being an important customer and partner.