skift take
— Justin Dawes
Travelsoft Group, a travel technology holding company, announced today that it has acquired Eventis Media Group, publisher of L'Ecole Touristique, a French travel industry magazine founded in 1934.
Eventiz Media also owns TOM.travel, Deìplacements Pros and Pagtour Media. The company also organizes several annual events for the French tourism and business travel industry.
In 2023, Evens submitted documents to the French government showing that it was in financial trouble.
Travelsoft Group owns three technology platforms primarily focused on booking and marketing travel packages for agents and travel companies. According to the company's website, sales of its products are 41 million euros.
Eventiz founder Freìdeìric Vanhoutte will join Travelsoft with less than 20 employees. Prior to the partnership, Travelsoft had over 200 employees.
Why buy a media and events company?
TravelSoft CEO and founder Christian Sabberg said the partnership is part of a long-term strategy.
Under the plan, Eventiz will use booking data from the travelsoft tech company to provide data services for tourism boards, allowing them to better inform their marketing strategies.
Currently, they primarily measure performance based on an analysis of tourist numbers at the end of each season. The plan is to provide booking data months in advance, including which travelers are going where and how it compares to previous seasons.
“Today, this data doesn't really exist,” Sabbagh said. “And we believe there is tremendous value in making this data publicly available and available to our clients, especially tourism boards.”
He said part of the reason this service is provided by Eventiz is because of the company's existing strong relationships with tourism boards, primarily through promotions at events.
“In the future, Eventiz will be able to not only sell events, but also sell related data to clients,” Sabbagh said.
Meanwhile, the Eventiz media company will continue to publish with the same journalistic standards, he said. The event will continue and may be held in the future.
financial health
The purchase price was not disclosed.
TravelSoft's three high-tech companies are in good financial shape, but Eventiz was looking for a buyer or reorganization to stay in business, Saber said.
“As we are a small company, economically speaking we can support that we are not a very profitable company at the moment, but we hope that in the future we can change this,” Sabbagh said. he said.
He said his priority was not to make Eventiz profitable, but to leverage its assets for planned projects.
“This should improve the company's profitability,” he said.
Takeover scandal
Sabbagh is also the founder and CEO of France-based Orchestra, Travelsoft's first portfolio company. Travelsoft acquired Germany-based Traffics in 2022 and Spain-based Travel Compositor in 2023.
There will be more acquisitions in the future, Sabah said. It could be a company that focuses on similar travel technology companies that focus on other regions, or it could be a company that specializes in something that the existing Travelsoft companies don't do.
And each acquisition will enrich the data for the market analysis service he plans to build.
“The more you acquire and consolidate the technology market, the more relevant data you have from many sources,” Sabbagh said.
Photo credit: L'Echo Touristique, founded in 1934, has been acquired.
