Last Word
A multi-platform
approach
Tom Kemp, CEO of Northstar, on the acquisition of
the Centaur travel and meetings portfolio and his
plans for the future
W
e had identified the
Centaur travel and
meetings portfolio a number
of years ago. Primarily a guy
who runs our business travel
news group who would go to the
Business Travel Show every year
and who said it was a great event
and that we should try to buy it.
We actually had reached out to
Centaur probably two-to-three
years ago, had conversations with
them and at that point they said,
‘at one point we may go through
a rationalisation of our portfolio,
but we’re not ready now’.
They announced last Fall that
they were going to put some of
their businesses on the market
and they knew we were interested
so we were contacted by their
investment bank, Cavendish
Corporate Finance, and started
discussions from there. We’ve
been working on it and doing due
diligence.
It’s a strategic buy for us, we’re
complementary because we’re not
in the UK or Europe for the most
part but we have leading positions
in the US in the meetings and
incentive industry. The three
events, the Business Travel Show,
the Meetings Show and Travel
Technology Europe, aligned
perfectly.
One of the big differences is that
the travel and meetings portfolio
at Centaur was a small bit of a
66 — May
much larger business in a lot of
different vertical markets, whereas
our entire company is 100 per cent
dedicated to travel, meetings and
hospitality.
Corporate travel and meetings
in the UK and Europe are very
large markets, although obviously
the European markets have not
had as much underlying economic
growth as North America, China
or Southeast Asia but it’s a
massive market. Brexit will have
an unknown impact, but we’ve
never had a platform in Europe
or the UK and so we’re going to
be setting up our own office and
platform in central London.
All Centaur Group have is
face-to-face exhibitions, which
is great, but they don’t have
a deeper platform of media,
content, research and marketing
services like we do. We’re a little
bit different in that, as opposed
to being an exhibitions-only
company, we’re multi-platform
and we like to be much more
deeply embedded in the markets
that we serve.
The first thing we want to do
is make sure that we get the team
transitioned and integrated into
Northstar. We have a transitional
services agreement with Centaur
and they’ll continue to provide
some services to us while we find
our own office, set up our own
technology and financial platforms
and hire our own IT people and
financial people.
We want to leverge our content,
our databases and our client
relationships all three of the
corporate travel markets and then
look to expand the offerings to our
audiences and our clients.
I sent a note to the entire travel
and meetings team at Centaur and
we’re very excited about it because
we see it as a perfect fit. We’ll be
offering employment to the entire
team and we’ll be looking to hire
additional people to support them
in London.
What we hope to do, and I
think this an opportunity and
challenge for a lot of organisers,
is something that’s often talked
about in the exhibition business,
which is trying to broaden your
engagement with your audience
and your clients beyond just your
episodic events, which in many
cases that take place once a year.
We’re multiplatform, with
digital media marketing services
and research as well as face-to-
face events, and what we want to
do is deepen those connections
and our engagement with the
audiences we serve.