Big shake up in French holiday sector – the Cheshire connection
The owner of Cheshire-based holiday business Eurocamp has acquired rival French campsite Vacanceselect Group for €1billion, which includes the popular Canvas Holidays brand in the UK.
The deal sees Eurocamp owner ECG triple its campsite portfolio to include 500 sites across France, Italy, Spain, Croatia and The Netherlands.
The deal has been given the green light by French competition authorities and creates a holiday business with an expected turnover of €700million this year.
The campsite portfolio also now includes 100 high-end parks with the Tohapi brand joining its existing Marvilla Parks brand.
Headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France, ECG is owned by American private equity firm PAI Partners, who acquired the business from Carlyle in 2019. Its brands include Homair, Eurocamp, Al Fresco, and Roan which were acquired by the previous owners Carlyle, Ontario Teachers and Montefiore.
ECG President Alain Calmé said: “With the integration of Vacanceselect I am delighted that European Camping Group is now the leading provider of outdoor accommodation across Europe.
“By uniting the talented and passionate professionals from across both these businesses we will be able to ensure our wide range of parcs and accommodation set in a variety of locations from beachside to mountainside, continue to enchant, entertain and delight families from across all of Europe.
“But above all, this allows us to share best practices to improve the quality, accessibility and sustainability of our offer.”
Eurocamp Managing Director Darren Marsh adds: “This deal provides Eurocamp customers with a truly unrivaled choice of holiday parks across the most popular travel hotspots in Europe.
“We can’t wait to introduce this new holiday park portfolio to our guests in the coming months.”
Cheshire based Eurocamp was founded in 1973 by Alan Goulding selling to the London based retail group Combined English Stores plc in 1981. The business moved from Knutsford to Hartford, near Northwich in 1998 and changed the group name to from Eurocamp plc to Holidaybreak plc to better reflect the aspirations and range of activities.
In September 2011, Holidaybreak was acquired by Cox & Kings a travel operator based in India. In June 2014, Eurocamp was acquired by Homair Vacances Group, a specialist in outdoor holidays with over twenty years experience in Europe, which in turn was bought as part of the creation of ECG.
