The owners of holiday companies Haven and Butlins are reportedly preparing an offer to build Newcastle-based holiday park company Parkdean Resorts.
It has been widely reported that Parkdean Resorts is being sold by Canadian investment group Onex, which bought the company for £ 1.35 billion in 2016.
Now there are reports that Bourne Leisure – which combines Haven Holiday Parks, Butlins and Warner Leisure Hotels – is working with its US private equity owner Blackstone on an offer for Parkdean resorts.
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If successful, this would see Parkdean’s property of 66 holiday parks teaming up with Haven’s 37 sites to create one of the largest holiday companies in the country. It was reported that Blackstone and Bourne Leisure saw a good fit between the two companies.
Parkdean Resorts, which has around 750 employees at its Newcastle-based home, was founded in 2015 through the merger of Parkdean Holidays and Park Resorts, sold to Onex a year later. Its sites in the northeast include Sandy Bay, close to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea and Whitley Bay Holiday Park in the northeast.
The potential sales pitches come at a time of investment in the Parkdean Resorts portfolio, which has parks on coastal sites as well as areas of natural beauty and has benefited from a current in demand for holidays in the UK.
Late last year, Parkdean published research on the impact of Covid-19 on the travel and tourism industry, claiming that staycations in the UK would increase.
The survey found that the majority of respondents (53%) plan to go on holiday in the UK by 2022, compared to 25% planning to go on holiday in Europe and 6% in the US. Parkdean has created hundreds of new jobs, in part through the government’s Kickstarter scheme, to meet growing demand.
Parkdean Resorts’ chief client officer Catherine Lynn said: “Demand has risen, and the UK’s appetite for staycations remained high through 2021. Even though international travel reopened. Reservations were strong throughout September and October, and we looking forward to another busy year in 2022.
Parkdean Resorts and Blackstone were asked for comment. Bourne Leisure declined to comment.
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