Tui has bought back three brands from Hotelbeds; Destination Services, Intercruises Shoreside & Port Services and Pacific World. Hotelbeds has made the sale in order to focus on its core bedbank brands after it acquired Tourico Holidays and GTA in June last year.
Hotelbeds was sold by Tui in September 2016 for £930 million to private equity group Cinven and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Hotelbeds Group executive chairman Joan Vila said Tui had approached his company about the latest deal.
He said: “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.”
He added that the Destination Management division had grown in the last 18 months but that the sale was “in the best interests of all stakeholders”.
“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,” he said.
Destination Services is a B2B provider of incoming services to tour operators in more 70 countries worldwide and handles around 2.2 million passengers per year.
Intercruises is a global ground handling and port agency business specializing in the cruise sector, offering services in around 60 countries covering over 400 ports. Intercruises handles more than 12,000 port calls each year.
Pacific World operates in the meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE) segment in more than 30 countries.
