The acquisition of Quebec City travel company Les Voyages Laurier du Vallon (LDV) is the third of such announcements by the Australian Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) in less than a month. In early July, FCTG also acquired Olympus Tours, a Mexico-based destination management company and Bespoke Hospitality Management Asia, a resort operator in Thailand.
LDV has six locations across Quebec City and one in Montreal; about one hundred employees work for LDV across its core business units, which include a five-shop luxury leisure travel business, a corporate business operating out of Quebec City and Montreal and an emerging MICE business. The businesses will continue to be traded as LDV to capitalize on the local brand presence, and LDV general manager Nicolas Racine will join FLT’s senior leadership group in Canada.
With this most recent move, FTCG aims to strengthen the company's North American presence, entering into Canada’s second largest province and an area where FCTG was previously under-represented, due to challenges with local guidelines relating to the use of the French language.
FCTG managing director Graham Turner says that “by working with LDV, we will be able to leverage the business’s local expertise, experience and linguistic capabilities to grow our presence in Canada’s second largest market, which is a major corporate hub and home to a large and active leisure travel population.” FCTG’s broader Americas division includes Flight Centre US, the FLT Canada business and a small corporate travel operation in Mexico.
FCTG also recently secured a 24.1 percent interest in Bibam, an Argentina-based travel and technology group—the nation’s second largest. Bibam owns and operates the Biblos brand as well as the e-commerce site avantrip.com.
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