Hotelbeds Group has announced the sale of its Destination Management operations for enterprise value of €110 million to TUI. 

This goes against the grain of Hotelbeds’ recent behaviour as it has been on an acquisition run recently, doubling the size of its business through the acquisitions in 2017 of Tourico Holidays and GTA. These two leading bedbanks had a strong presence in North America and Asia-Pacific respectively.

The move has more squarely focuses Hotelbeds as a hotel distribution giant, estimated to produce more 40 million room nights in 2018. This announcement signals Hotelbeds’ intent to focus squarely on their bed bank business.

Joan Vilà, executive chairman of Hotelbeds Group commented: “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.”

The acquisitions

TUI  picks up three assets in the transaction that are a great fit for their tour business but also support their ambitions in cruise and MICE industries:

Destination services

Destination Services is a B2B provider of incoming services to tour operators globally, offering tours, transfers and in-destination services.

It has partners in over 70 countries worldwide and handles around 2.2 million passengers per year, with with four large hubs in EU & Med, Americas, India & Indian Ocean, and APAC.

Intercruises

Intercruises is a global ground-handling and port agency business, specialising in the cruise sector, offering services in around 60 countries covering over 400 ports.

Every year Intercruises handles more than 12,000 port calls, providing services to millions of passengers on behalf of its cruise partners.

Pacific World

Pacific World is a meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE) company operating in over 30 countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.

Founded in 1980 in Hong Kong, the company handles around 1,300 events per year globally.