On July 13, Australian travel conglomerate Stella Group announced it is on the verge of buying Travelport’s UK long-haul specialist Travelbag.
While the precise financial terms are not disclosed, it is known that the buyer has A$30m (£13m) facility to fund the deal. The sum must also cover buying the management contract on a hotel on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Stella MD Rolf Krecklenberg says that the deal should be finalised next week.
Australasian and Asia-Pacific specialist Travelbag has eight shops in the UK, and currently has an ATOL entitling it to carry 120K passengers, 90K of which fall under the agency seat only category.
Travelbag became part of Cendant, as was, when the US giant paid £210m for ebookers at the back end of 2004. ebookers itself bought Travelbag for £55m nearly two years previously.
Following the Cendant spin, Travelbag became part of Travelport, and currently sits as part of its Orbitz Worldwide This unit, comprising the consumer brands such as orbitz, ebookers and hotelclub, is being lined up for an IPO by its VC owners Blackstone Group.
Stella Group meanwhile is part of Australian-listed fund management and investment group MFS. MFS, with a market cap of A$2bn (£850m), added Stella to its portfolio in 2005. Stella has c15,000 rooms in Australia and New Zealand under the brands Mantra, Peppers, BreakFree and Saville.
It recently added 9,000 rooms in Africa to its portfolio with the A$255m purchase of Protea Hotels.
In a statement, Stella said that the Travelbag deal was part of its drive to become ‘a fully integrated international travel company’.
Report by The Mole
