Kuoni confirms sale of luxury ski brand
Kuoni has confirmed today that it sold its only remaining ski operation, Ski Verbier, to an investment house in October.
The brand, which Kuoni had been trying to off-load for about a year, was acquired by Bluebird Partners for an undisclosed sum.
All five permanent members of Ski Verbier staff, including head of sales and marketing Fiona Ellis and operations manager Nicola Ross have stayed with the business, which employs up to 30 people at the height of the season.
Bluebird said it planned to grow the brand and is in process of strengthening the management team, including recruiting a managing director to head the business.
"We are trying to bring that independent spirit back to the brand and make it more dynamic than it was able to be as part of a big business," said Guy Gillon of Bluebird.
Ski Verbier was previously owned by CV Travel, which was acquired by Kuoni in 2007. It was the only remaining ski operator owned by the Kuoni group, which dropped its own ski programmes several years ago.
Since its acquisition by Bluebird, Ski Verbier has added a new, large freestanding chalet in the centre of the Swiss resort for this winter.
Gillon said it was too early to say if the operation would expand beyond Verbier into other resorts. "We are ambitious to grow the business but our focus for the moment is getting the product levels up.
"We have fantastic service levels, in terms of customer feedback, but a lot of the top end product in Verbier has moved on and we are looking at adding new product."
Bluebird is a London-based investment house focused on turnaround, restructuring, recovery and distressed investments with enterprise values of up to £50m.
Founded in May 2010, it has about £130m of assets under management, mainly in leisure and operational property. One of its most recent acquisitions was Isle of Wight-based holiday parks operator Island View Holidays from the receivers for £7.5m.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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