Skift Take
To some extent, the shift in geographic focus of the travel IPO market from the U.S. in 2013 toward Europe and Asia Pacific so far in 2014 reflects where the burgeoning investment and market opportunities are opening up, although it is somewhat surprising that Latin America has yet to be heard from in a very meaningful way.
Editor’s note: Skift is two years old this week, and we’re rolling out five days of special travel industry coverage. This is just one of a series you can find in full here.
The initial public offering market in travel has tilted in 2014 toward companies based outside the U.S., such as UK-headquartered Saga, Japan's Seibu Holdings and Barcelona-headquartered eDreams Odigeo, but these IPOs lack the blockbuster dimensions of some of 2013s IPOs as none so far this year have breached the $1 billion threshold in terms of net proceeds.
In contrast, in 2013 private equity firm Blackstone spearheaded the high-profile IPOs of Hilton Worldwide ($2.35 billion), SeaWorld ($702 million) and Extended Stay America ($565 million), all U.S.-based, as well as theme park operator Merlin Entertainments ($1.57 billion) in London.
Of the twelve travel-related IPOs we tracked for full-year 2013, seven were U.S. companies (Hilton Worldwide, Empire State Realty Trust, SeaWorld, Extended Stay America, Norwegian Cruise Line, Gogo Inc. an
