Direct Travel acquires strategic companion ATPI

Denver-based Direct Travel has acquired strategic companion ATPI,
making a enterprise dealing with greater than $6 billion in annual complete journey quantity.
Details of the transaction weren’t disclosed.

The journey administration firms started working collectively in
2017 and described the deal as a “natural progression” of their collaboration “reasonably
than a response to the business’s motion in the direction of large-scale consolidation”.

Direct Travel was itself acquired final 12 months by an funding group led
by Steve Singh, whose portfolio additionally contains journey tech platform
Spotnana, conferences administration specialist Troop and cost and expense supplier Center. 

In a press release offered to BTN Europe, Direct Travel and ATPI mentioned: “This acquisition is about
progress – increasing our geographic presence, enhancing our capabilities, and
positioning us for future success,” including that it’s now one in every of few world companies with a presence in additional than 90 international locations “and
the flexibility to serve shoppers and suppliers on a very world scale”.

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Manchester, UK, ATPI was
ranked the eighth largest enterprise in Europe’s Leading TMCs 2025
report, with round €1 billion in gross sales final 12 months. It specialises within the
company, marine, power, sports activities and group journey sectors.

The firms mentioned they don’t anticipate any redundancies
on account of the acquisition and the ATPI model “will be kept intact for now”.
They added: “The senior exec group inside
ATPI stays the identical throughout the cupboard, MDs and enterprise line heads”
and the combination of the 2 TMCs will “happen in phases to make sure a
clean and considerate transition”.

The union may even speed up
the worldwide roll-out of Direct’s Avenir Travel Edition platform which is constructed on Spotnana expertise.

“This partnership represents a
pivotal second in reshaping managed journey, permitting us to ship tailor-made
options and a seamless expertise for shoppers throughout a spread of sectors and
of all sizes and places,” mentioned Christal Bemont, CEO, Direct Travel.

ATPI CEO Ian Sinderson added: “By
bolstering our already robust place in journey expertise and extremely
specialised journey help, we’ll mix to offer a
compelling various to mega-agencies for world journey all through our
vary of intensive geographic markets and enterprise strains.”

Travel expertise supplier
TripStax, which was spun out of ATPI in 2022, is a part of the acquisition and
will proceed to function as an impartial enterprise unit inside Direct Travel.

Recent weeks have seen quite a lot of TMC acquisitions pushed
by, together with the completion of American Express Global Business Travel’s buy of CWT, ATG’s acquisition of CWT’s German operations, and the acquisition of
Key Travel’s European operations by Trip.Biz and its North America enterprise by
Globespan Travel Management.