Birmingham team advises Sykes Holiday Cottages on milestone acquisition

Birmingham’s Springboard Corporate Finance has supported Vitruvian backed Sykes Holiday Cottages on the acquisition of Forest Holidays.

Forest Holidays is an owner and operator of environmentally sensitive cabins set across Britain’s forests and has 12 forest locations with many in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

These include the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park in Scotland and opening later this year in the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales.

As part of the combination, Forest Holidays’ existing institutional investor group, led by Phoenix Equity Partners and including LDC, realised their investment.

Forestry England, Forestry and Land Scotland and Natural Resources Wales will divest their legacy minority stake.

The acquisition of Forest Holidays aims to accelerate Sykes Holiday Cottages’ ambition to become a prominent UK-focused holiday group with a diverse range of unique rental accommodation.

Sykes Holiday Cottages, whose platform provides access to more than 22,500 holiday homes, is the UK’s fastest-growing holiday cottage rental agency. The business is backed by Vitruvian Partners.

Graham Donoghue, chief executive of Sykes Holiday Cottages, said: “As the UK’s leading provider of woodland accommodation, Forest Holidays is the perfect complement to our existing holiday cottage rental business, offering our respective customers an unrivalled choice and quality of accommodation across a variety of settings.”

Sykes Holiday Cottages was advised on the deal by Springboard partners Simon Ward and James Bailey, director Matthew Guest, assistant director Tom Hammond and Executive Claudia Haywood.

Ward said: “Sykes Holiday Cottages has been a client of Springboard for many years and it was an absolute pleasure to partner with the team there to deliver this key deal. The development of the business has been massively impressive and the Forest Holidays transaction is set to accelerate this still further. ”

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