KUONI Travel Holding has made the market sit up with its announcement last Monday that it was buying Gullivers Travel Associates (GTA) for US$705 million (TTG Asia e-Daily, March 7, 2011), with industry players interviewed at ITB – Kuoni competitors included – admiring it as a smart move by a company generally seen as conservative.
Hotelplan Suisse CEO, Thomas Stirnimann, said: “It’s not a done deal yet, they have to raise the capital and it looks a bit expensive to me, but from a strategic point of view, it’s a smart move and will give Kuoni a more balanced portfolio, with less dependency on the traditional tour operating business, which is under pressure these days. With all due respect, it is a good move.”
With the deal being subject to Travelport lenders’ consent and Kuoni shareholders approval at the AGM April 20, Rolf Schafroth, the man who will take over the responsibility of GTA once the deal goes through (Ken Esterow is understood to be going back to Travelport), in an interview with TTG Asia ITB Daily declined to discuss future expectations and earnings.
However, Schafroth stressed that this was not a story about a competitor buying another to consolidate the business and cut jobs, but about bringing two successful businesses, GTA and Kuoni Destination Management (KDM), which are still growing, to new heights.
GTA, which has been in the market for sale, “has found a good home in Kuoni because it is a business we know and have been doing ourselves, and we believe in the growth of this business and intend to further develop it”, said the CEO Destination Management and EVP Procurement & Production.
“It’s not just a change of ownership. We buy and integrate, but we don’t Kuoni-nise companies—look at the companies we bought like Asian Trails or Desert Adventures. They have their culture and values and we want to preserve them.”
He said GTA added content and skilled people. The immediate synergies would be buying power and creating a stronger value proposition to suppliers with a bigger client base and distribution.
He said the GTA brand and the Kuoni brand would remain but it was too premature to say how other brands of GTA and Kuoni, such as Kuoni Connect, would fall in line following the integration.
