Navigant Pockets Four More
<B>Navigant Pockets Four More</B>
By Sarah Welt
Bringing the count to 28, Navigant International has closed four more acquisitions in recent months: Oaks Travel Management Group of Houston; Lovejoy Tiffany of Ann Arbor, Mich.; Dollinger Travel of Rochester, N.Y.; and Toronto-based Travel Resources.
Oaks Travel, with $50 million in air sales, was acquired in mid-November. CEO Luis Acosta is staying on through the transition period but then Gary Pearce, president of Houston-based Atlas Supertravel, will take the helm of Oaks as well. Navigant vice president and controller John Coffman said, "Gary Pearce is going to be president of the South Central region." The company will be looking for synergies between Oaks and Atlas Supertravel.
Dollinger Travel, with about $40 million in air spend, closed a deal with Navigant in October to bolster its technology and have a national presence.
Meanwhile, Travel Resources, with $25 million in U.S. booked air volume, also was added in October because "Toronto emerged as a business center of Canada," Coffman said. The plan is to have the new agency work with Navigant's other Canadian agencies to leverage buying power with the airlines. Travel Resources' David Quibell will stay on as president and also will become president of the Canadian region.
Navigant bought the $26 million Lovejoy Tiffany in September, in part because it has a strong mix of meeting and incentive travel and corporate travel. Coffman said it is also in one of Navigant's top 25 business markets and rounds out the North Central territory, Which already includes Travel Consultants of Grand Rapids, Mich., and Arrington Travel in Chicago.
Navigant also has been working to change all its agencies to the Navigant name. A spokesperson for the company said the name change has been a soft launch internally to date, with a major push to the general public in the third quarter.
Other year-end agency acquisitions included the purchase last month by Birmingham, Ala.'s Adventure Travel of Adventure World Travel of Pensacola, Fla., and Four Seasons Travel of Huntsville, Ala.--adding another $12 million in sales to its more than $66 million air volume (<I>BTN</I>, May 31, 1999). Adventure Travel CEO Alan Hale said the previous owners will continue to work with the combined organizations. "These mergers won't be the last of the agency acquisitions that we do in the next six months to a year," he said.
In late November, Adventure Travel and Piedmont Travel of Greenville, S.C., announced the creation of a strategic alliance and formation of the holding company Admont L.L.C., which will concentrate on purchasing technology. Piedmont's president John Townes also said his agency is looking for acquisition opportunities, independent of the new company.
"Regional players like Adventure Travel are the typical buyers out there right now. Someone who is $40 million and wants to get to $100 million," noted Roswell, Ga.-based Innovative Travel Acquisitions Inc. president Bob Sweeney. "They are buying up midmarket agencies doing between $4 million and $15 million because those are absolutely feeling the pinch the most.