S8 corners travel and now goes after more accommodation
After cornering Australia’s retail travel industry, S8 has announced that the company is seeking further opportunities in resort accommodation
Founded in property management, S8 has made 36 acquisitions to become the nation’s largest travel retail business and manages and markets 5,550 four and five star units on the Gold and Sunshine coasts and at Port Douglas.
S8 chair Jenny Hutson said that last year’s acquisition Port Douglas Reef Resorts Ltd, which they have operated for 12 months has given the company experience in the resort sector, adding, “In the future we imagine looking at our accommodation offering from a different perspective and if we are looking at being expansive, to be expansive in that space.”
Ms Hutson said the company is always looking for new opportunities, having failed to take over accommodation manager Breakfree, as it has not been able to match its high profile retail travel agency business and its accommodation portfolio saying, “We haven’t been able to find value for some time in terms of the accommodation side, which has been an important part in our vertical integration strategy.”
S8 is now Australia’s largest domestic retail travel company with 1,700 agencies, as well as a presence in New Zealand, South Africa and Britain and in May, they launched a $NZ235/$A196 million takeover bid for New Zealand’s biggest travel company Gullivers Travel Group Ltd, which runs about 280 retail travel outlets.
While the offer has already been accepted by Gulliver’s founder and Managing Director John Bagnall for his 26% holding of the company, S8 says that they have issued Gullivers with a notice with respect to their offer for the formal terms and it will be out definitely within a month, probably with three weeks together with their response to shareholders.
S8 is also completing a friendly takeover Transonic Travel Ltd following a $67 million takeover of Travelscene American Express, the operator of over 600 franchised travel agencies after last year’s purchase of Harvey World Travel.
Report by The Mole
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