Gold Coast-based travel group Tourism Holdings, led by industry veteran David Oliver, has rescued travel booking site Roamfree out of administration along with subsidiaries Resoline, Roamfree Advanced and BookEasy in an attempt to expand outside Australia and online.
The acquisitions come after Roamfree.com, which was founded by travel industry executive Tony Smith 2006, was placed into administration last month after the board failed to reach a deal with note-holders regarding a debt repayment plan.
Oliver says the acquisitions are part of an effort to expand the company’s presence and improve the Roamfree brand to compete with similar accommodation booking technology such as Siteminder and Netrooms.
“I was a co-founder in the site’s technology, and I think it’s a good product, has good staff and I believe in the company.”
“There’s been uncertainty for awhile with the business, and the brand has been sort of tarnished. I need to get customers reassured that it isn’t just business as usual, but we’re going to look after them and then once that’s done, we can continue to grow.”
Oliver says the main acquisition is Roamfree, but booking form tool Roamfree Advance, travel tech group Bookeasy.com and online booking software Resonline will all work together to support the Roamfree brand to become a player in the “huge market”.
“I’ve negotiated some extra content that will give us 160,000 hotels or accommodation booking locations worldwide over the next six weeks. This isn’t just Australia for bookings, but the tech part of these acquisitions is so we can build our brand and grow the business. We want to get our site ranking and obtain some market share.”
“I’ll be doing a door-to-door road show to see clients. I want to consolidate this business, bring it back to basics and go to everyone and see what we can do for them.”
“We’re going internationally as well, and within six weeks we’ll have major wholesalers from America, Europe and Asia feeding directories into Roamfree and that will really expand our reach.”
Oliver rejects the notion the travel industry is suffering through the downturn, saying that although some segments have been hit the domestic sector is holding up fairly well.
“I know for a fact that even the bookings on Roamfree.com have increased by 10% over the past six weeks, and if you look at other travel portals you can see the increases there. Rather than going internationally, customers will stay locally, and they’ll stay for four days rather than a week, but people still need to have a holiday. The sector is doing okay right now.”
Roamfree spent over $30 million during 2006-07 on a number of acquisitions, including the purchase of a 90% share in Tourism Technology in a $16.8 million deal during September 2007.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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