Investment fuels lowcostbeds.com expansion

Thursday, 12 Sep, 2005 0

Lowcostbeds.com is moving into long haul after securing “substantial investment” valuing the online travel provider at £7 million.

An unspecified sum in the “millions” has been injected into the company, according to founder and CEO Paul Evans. He said £7 million was a “fair valuation” for the business which only started trading last November

Goa and the US have already been intorduced with the Caribbean being added in the next four to six weeks, according to Evans.

The online company claims to be ahead of its business plan for its first year of trading to sell more than 30,000 holidays and plans to sell 100,000 over the next two years.

Investment into the company has come from Close Venture Management, a previous investor in activehotels.com which was sold to priceline.com for £90 million last year.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Hunt, former CEO of travel technology firm Rapid Travel Solutions which was sold to Telewest in 2001, has joined the board of lowcostbeds.com as a non-executive director having played a “major role” in setting up the company, which started trading on November 1, 2004.

Evans said the investment would “provide us with funds to further exploit the massive growth in the independent, dynamically packaged holiday market and establish us as the leading independent company in this sector”.

He added: “This investment completes our first phase of development and positions us for profitable growth.”

Besides the expansion into long haul, the company is to add scheduled airlines and expand the range of hotels, car rental, transfer and insurance components for travel agents. The company already provides accommodation at more than 3,000 properties in the beach, city and ski sectors in addition to a range of other services including 30 low cost and charter airlines.

Report by Phil Davies

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Phil Davies

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