News Room

Travel Class management buy-out

The London office of Aberdeen announces the completion of the MBO of Travel Class in a £4.2 million transaction. Travel Class is a specialist tour-operator that provides residential courses for school groups and ski trips for schools, groups and other organisations.

Travel Class was established in 1994 and is located in New Milton, Hampshire. Travel Class has two products: Junior Choice Adventure, which provides residential multi-activity courses for 8-14 year old school groups and other organizations. Schools can select from around 40 activities, which range from climbing, abseiling, fencing and blind trail to watersports such as canoeing and surfing. The second product is Ski Class which provides all aspects of a group's ski trip, including transport (air or coach), full board accommodation, lift pass, ski instruction, ski hire and insurance.

The team is led by Ian Finlay as Managing Director, who joined Travel Class in November 2001. The management team includes Lisa Wright (Sales and Contracts Director) and Steve Allen (Non-Executive Chairman). A Finance Director is to be appointed. The deal was introduced by Stewart Lambert of Tenon Corporate Finance in Southampton who was adviser to the management team.

Ian Finlay, Managing Director of Travel Class, said:

"I am thrilled to have been able to lead the MBO of Travel Class and the team here is very much looking forward to growing the business and achieving our plans."

The transaction was financed with senior debt from Bank of Scotland (Nick Davies). Due diligence advisors were HMT (Financial), Vaughan Evans & Partners (Commercial), Strategic Resource (Management) and Marsh (Insurance). Legal advice was provided by Eversheds (Aberdeen), Lamport Bassitt (Management) and Field Semour Parkes (Bank).