Thomas Cook invests in activity resort group
Thomas Cook has signed a strategic partnership with a Swiss-based hotel property development company, LMEY, to develop and grow Thomas Cook’s own-brand hotel portfolio.
It has acquired from LMEY a 42% stake in Aldiana, a German company which operates eight activity club resorts in Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Tunisia and Austria, with plans to open another four resorts over the next two years.
Following the acquisition, Aldiana will sit alongside Thomas Cook’s six existing proprietary hotel brands.
Alongside this, Thomas Cook and LMEY have entered into an agreement to work together to create a joint hotel investment platform, in order to accelerate the growth of Thomas Cook’s own-brand hotels portfolio.
As part of the deal, each will contribute a minimum of five owned and directly-managed hotel properties.
These assets, which have a combined value of around £150 million, will be used to acquire a pipeline of further hotel and resort assets across Thomas Cook’s destination markets.
Thomas Cook said further details will be provided in due course.
Chief executive Peter Fankhauser said: "The development of a strong portfolio of own-brand hotels is absolutely key to our success, allowing us to provide customers with a consistent and high quality holiday, whatever their needs.
"Our new strategic partnership with LMEY, with its proven track record of identifying and redeveloping highly successful properties in sun and beach locations, gives us the perfect launch pad to accelerate this critical part of our strategy.
"The acquisition of a stake in Aldiana expands our reach with a premium club-based activity holiday brand that both complements and enhances our existing own-brand portfolio, enriching our holiday offering for customers and giving us an established pipeline of new properties for the future. This is yet another example of the way that we are transforming our business through partnerships."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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