THOMSON has acquired the 23-shop south Wales miniple Travel House for an initial sum of £22.5m, five months after Travel Weekly exclusively revealed the market leader was in talks with the retailer.
The purchase of Travel House became a two-horse race betweeen Thomson and Airtours, which was reluctant to pay more than £20m.
Thomson will make a further payment of up to £17.5m, depending on profits and volume growth of the business.
In line with its current strategy of buying miniples, Thomson will keep and expand the Travel House brand, opening up to 50 more branches within three years.
The deal makes multi-millionaires of 36-year-old Martin Morgan and his wife Louisa, aged 32, who own 88% of Travel House, which they started just nine years ago.
“I think Thomson is the strongest player and that was a big factor in the sale,” said Morgan. “I want to be part of it. We are just a bucket-and-spade retailer and have found it is becoming increasingly hard to be independent.”
For the year to September 1999, Travel House is expected to achieve sales of over 200,000 holidays and double pre-tax profits to more than £3m. It is already a strong seller for Thomson. As well as its branch network, the company also operates a direct-sell Teletext and call-centre operation in Swansea. Around 100 out of a total of 250 employees are employed in the telesales area of the business.
A Thomson spokesman said:”Teletext was a key element in making the acquisition. We wanted to gain the expertise in the Teletext market.”