NEWS 4


Hollie-Rae Merrick and Lucy Huxley


Cruise.co.uk is plotting rapid international expansion, acquisitions in the UK and Europe, and a massive recruitment drive after being sold for £52 million.


The online cruise specialist also plans to branch into new sectors, such as escorted touring, after being sold to Bridgepoint Development Capital last Friday, which previously owned luxury French cruise line Ponant. Bridgepoint took a majority


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5 STORIES HOT Cruise.co.uk plans rapid expansion


stake in the business, believed to be larger than the stake previous owner Risk Capital Partners held. Chief executive Seamus Conlon remains the second-largest shareholder.


Conlon said last Friday’s deal


would help Cruise.co.uk achieve 50% growth in the UK over the next three years, fuelled in part by the planned recruitment of 75 consultants. He also said the investment


would help accelerate expansion in the UK and across Europe. The agency already has offices in Redditch, near Birmingham, Ireland and Australia, but plans


to launch across Europe. “We have big plans and big ambitions,” Conlon said. “We want to be the largest non-American cruise platform. We won’t go into America as a source market but anywhere else is fair game.” Conlon does not rule out acquisitions in the UK and believes cruise agencies will consolidate. “We will be an active player in


“We have big plans. We want to be the largest non-American cruise platform”


that – leading acquisitions and the consolidation process in the UK and Europe,” he said. “Our core focus has been cruise and both ocean and river cruise have done amazingly well. We think our model could expand to other sectors, such as escorted touring and trains. “These are products that, like


cruise, are very much focused on the over-50s. This is on our agenda for the next year.” Conlon said it hadn’t been decided if a new brand would be


created for escorting touring. › Seamus Conlon: Face to Face, page 14


5 Lowcostbeds yet to enter insolvency


Ian Taylor ian.taylor@travelweekly.co.uk


The bed bank arm of Lowcost Travel Group, Lowcostbeds, had yet to enter insolvency this week, raising fears of knock-on failures and of holidaymakers arriving at hotels to find rooms unpaid for.


Lowcost Travel ceased trading


on July 15 with up to 300,000 customers of online agent Lowcost Holidays booked or abroad and a £65 million black hole in its accounts. Alan Bowen, legal adviser to the Association of Atol Companies, said: “I expect at least as many customers have bookings with Lowcostbeds.” However, the CAA said it had “no figures on Atol-


“It’s a convoluted chain. There may well be consumers with hotel bookings unpaid”


protected bookings featuring components supplied by the Lowcost group”. The company’s pan-European structure – it was based in the UK, but sold holidays from Majorca and beds from Switzerland – has complicated the insolvency. Joint administrator Smith & Williamson confirmed: “Lowcostbeds should enter a Swiss insolvency process. The timing of the commencement of that process is uncertain.” Lowcostbeds sold accommodation to trade wholesalers and agents,


6 travelweekly.co.uk 11 August 2016


some of which was sold on to other wholesalers. Bowen suggested some bookings passed through two or three wholesalers and warned: “It’s a convoluted chain. There may well be consumers with hotel bookings not paid. “I suspect there will be more


failures. [But] until the end of September, we won’t know.” The administrators’


spokeswoman declined to comment on Lowcost’s cash flow leading up to the failure or on how it failed with peak-season bookings paid in full. But she said: “It’s apparent the group failed because it did not have enough profits to continue trading rather


than a lack of business.” Travel Weekly


understands some Atol-holders have six-figure bills for rebooking Lowcostbeds accommodation.


Alan Bowen: ‘I suspect there will be more failures’


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