Busines buyers want cruise agencies, but not travel schools

In demand: agencies selling cruises. Not in demand: travel schools. Bob Sweeney told TravelMole: “We used to sell travel schools, but there aren’t any out there anymore.” Mr. Sweeny, a former stockbroker on Wall Street with Lehman Brothers, is now the president and founder of Innovative Travel Acquisitions (ITA). The company is said to be the only specialty business in the country that dedicates 100% of their efforts to linking buyers and sellers of tour and travel related businesses throughout North America. “The Cruise business is in demand right now,” Mr. Sweeney said. The 9-11 event crippled his company. “After that, it was a tough sell,” he said. But the market has rebounded, he added, to the point where ITA has been involved in 465 successful tour and travel related mergers and acquisitions since the company’s founding in 1991. “Things look pretty good right now. The smaller agency such as the one or two-operators, or the doctor’s wife, they’re gone. But we’re seeing activity,” said Mr Sweeney. Today, his typical company sales is a business doing anywhere from half a million to multi-million in sales each year. The company offers a confidential service where “we discretely link buyers and sellers,” he said. Mr Sweeney’s ongoing concern with the future of the travel business is that the lack of travel schools reveal that fewer young people are being trained to enter the field. “If you’re giving advice to a 17-year-old, and asking whether they should go to computer school or travel school, what would you tell them? We’re not getting enough new young blood. That’s giving the on-line players a bigger advantage as the years go on,” he said.