Further acquisitions possible after Sunshine deal, says On The Beach chief

Further acquisitions possible after Sunshine deal, says On The Beach chief

“If there are other opportunities where we believe we can add value we would consider those.” Continue reading

On The Beach would consider further acquisitions following the £12 million takeover of sunshine.co.uk announced on Wednesday.

Chief executive, Simon Cooper, said: “We have a period of time where we have to settle and integrate and deliver on some of the benefits.

“That won’t take long and if there are other opportunities where we believe we can add value we would consider those.”

Cooper said it was still too early to make any decisions about consolidating sunshine.co.uk’s operations – the OTA has an office in Newcastle and On The Beach is Manchester based.

But he said there were people and capabilities within sunshine.co.uk that would benefit On The Beach.

“When we got to know the guys at sunshine.co.uk it was clear they had a very clean business with some strong capabilities and some underinvested potential,” Cooper said.

He added sunshine.co.uk had a good content framework but would benefit from On The Beach’s technology and lacked things like a low deposit scheme for flight plus hotel, personalisation capabilities and directly contracted product.

On The Beach’s direct contracting averaged 66% of all hotel buying in the first six months of 2017.

Cooper said On The Beach would have made the acquisition whether it was listed or not and that being public made completing the acquisition more complex than if it was private.