THOMSON Travel Group is expected to launch its own bid for First Choice if rival Airtours attempts to buy the Crawley-based operator.
First Choice is planning a merger with Kuoni but city sources believe Airtours is waiting to see the offer document to shareholders before launching a counter bid for First Choice, expected to be around 220p a share.
But Thomson issued a statement saying it would not allow its position as market leader to be threatened.
A spokesman for Thomson said:”We have been market leader in the UK for 25 years and we have no intention of losing that position.”
Although many city analysts took this as a signal that Thomson would launch a counter bid of its own, industry sources said the market leader’s tactic could be to add extra capacity to protect its number one position.
This would undoubtedly start a price war as bookings for summer 1999 are already flat and tour operators have postponed the launch of summer 2000 brochures until June 3 to allow agents to concentrate on selling this year’s holidays (Travel Weekly April 12).
Thomas Cook’s owner Preussag is also tipped to enter the bidding for First Choice, leading to a three-way battle for the operator.
Earlier, First Choice chairman Ian Clubb, who strongly supports the merger with Kuoni, claimed a bid from Airtours would represent a “reckless gamble”. He said a bid would be investigated by the competition authorities, which could take six months and severely damage First Choice. No action is expected before First Choice and Kuoni issue offer documents, which should happen by Friday.
Travel Weekly has already argued that a First Choice deal with either Airtours or Thomas Cook makes more sense than a merger between First Choice and Kuoni (Travel Weekly March 22).