Intrawest To Sell European Properties

Resort developer Intrawest, the company behind many of North America's successful resorts including Whistler, but currently under financial pressure due to the economic slowdown, is to sell its two European resorts.

Pierre & Vacances Group and Intrawest Hotels & Residences have signed an agreement for the acquisition of Intrawest's lodging and commercial operations at the company's flagship Arc 1950, which was completed last year and the Flaine Montsoleil resort which is still under construction.

Arc 1950 is Intrawest's first mountain resort in Europe. The acquisition agreement includes the resort's lodging management business, which consists of 655 apartments managed under the "Radisson" and "Intrawest Hotels & Residences" brands. Also included in the transaction is the management of two restaurants, a bar and two commercial spaces located in the resort village. The operations at Flaine Montsoleil Resort include the resort's lodging management business, which consists of 138 apartments. All of the staff associated with each of these businesses will also transition under the management of Pierre et Vacances. This includes both on site staff and support staff located in Bourget du Lac.

As part of the terms of the agreement, Pierre et Vacances will operate both resorts in accordance with 4-star tourist residence standards. The addition of these two branded resorts will significantly enhance the Pierre & Vacances Premium Alpine holiday offering, which includes residences currently operated under the Résidences MGM, and Pierre & Vacances residences (Courcheval, Méribel…).

The acquisition is scheduled to close on 1st October 2009.
Pierre & Vacances Group (also known as P&V and PV-Holidays) is the number one provider of holiday residences, villages and hotels all over France. It offers self-catering and hotel holidays in France, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Switzerland and the Caribbean through its five brands: Pierre & Vacances, Maeva, Residences MGM, Latitudes Hotels and Adagio City Aparthotel.

www.pv-holidays.com

Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc

As I pointed out before, P&V also own Center Parcs, and I recently discovered that they do time shares with the Maeva brand.

Ally

AllyG wrote:As I pointed out before, P&V also own Center Parcs, and I recently discovered that they do time shares with the Maeva brand.

Ally

Slightly OT Admin :oops: , but for AllyG here is an extract from the Wiki for Center Parcs

UK ownership

In 2001 during a move to concentrate on their core brewing business, Scottish and Newcastle sold the UK side of Center Parcs to venture capitalists. It was announced on 4 December 2003 that the then owners, Mid Ocean, would sell the UK resorts to Arbor for £285 million. Arbor was a company set up specifically to purchase Center Parcs, and float it on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market.

In May 2006 Center Parcs UK Group Plc was sold to The Blackstone Group, an American private investment company. Subsequently Center Parcs was delisted as a plc and re-registered as a private company, a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group.

During the sale, future growth of Center Parcs was hinted at by the Chief Executive, Martin Dalby. He said that the company might add a fifth village at some time in the future, but was also looking towards organic growth through investment in new facilities at the existing villages. Late in 2004 it was announced that the fifth village would be built near Woburn in Bedfordshire. Following the sale to The Blackstone Group, focus was shifted from growth, to investment in the existing villages and plans for the future village were put on hold.

[edit] European ownership

All resorts on the European main land are owned by a Dutch company called CenterParcs Europe, which is owned by a French company called Pierre et Vacances. Centerparcs Europe and Centerparcs UK only share history, name and logo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_Parcs_UK

It remains to be seen how the new owners of Arc 1950 take the site forward. Until now, it's been a bit like Disney Paris I reckon, French with a foreign standards overlay. Will P&V overstretch the finances, and start cutting corners?

Hi Bandit,
Thanks for your research.

That is certainly very curious. One can reach both the Center Parcs' through the same website, centerparcs.com. Apparently the Center Parcs brand is jointly owned by Center Parcs UK and Center Parcs Europe, although as you say apart from that they are now separately owned companies.

How surprising :shock:

I have never been to Center Parcs, either here or abroad, but I have stayed in a P&V apartment in France, and I thought it was very good value for the money.

Ally

Hello all,
Know this forum is for snowheads only but I've been keeping an eye on the thread out of interest, and thought it might be worth giving you all an official clarification to save further ponderings.

I help out with the online PR in the UK for P&V, and their UK Marketing manager has sent me an email today after I sent her a few of the speculations from the forum, following the news being posted.

Therefore, her official response is that:

On Intrawest: What is  signed at the moment is the 'promis de vente' ie agreement to sell and no decisions will be taken on future developments until after the completion of sale, as at the very minimum, P&V needs to do a thorough review and audit of the current situation and location. Then, once the sale is completed major decisions on future developments will, of course, be released to the press.

P&V are also currently are repositioning their products and the Intrawest residences will sit in the portfolio of Pierre & Vacances Premium. This portfolio will also contain the Residence MGM brand in the mountains, a resort in Courchevel 1850 and another in Mottaret plus selected 4 star beach sites which have the required facilities and infrastructure to meet the requirements of this new high quality brand.

In case you didn't know, they have holiday villages all over France,and whilst these are being re-grouped to make the Pierre & Vacances resorts brand for the UK market, this really won't affect any ski resorts this season. So bear this in mind if you start seeing the results of said re-branding- you're now informed sources!


On the subject of Maeva: When the Pierre & Vacances group acquired Maeva it also acquired the timeshare part of the business which they had acquired from Orion previously. The group still manages these timeshare properties under the Maeva brand and there are no plans to make any changes to this situation at all.

And finally, on the subject of Centre Parcs: Pierre & Vacances group is the parent company of Center Parcs Europe which operates the brands Center Parcs and Sunparks in Europe (Belguim, Netherlands, Germany and France) Sunparks was acquired in 2007. Center Parcs UK is separate business with no connection except for the brand, logo and shared use of the web url.

Really hope that clears anything up, I know the takeover could throw up a few questions, and I didn't want them to be left unanswered.

If you have anything else you'd like to ask, feel free to PM me or ask them here as they have said they are happy to provide you with answers to any questions and I've no problem passing them on.

Cheers :) ,
Laura

surflondon wrote:Hello all,
Know this forum is for snowheads only but I've been keeping an eye on the thread out of interest,

Actually, it might be worth pointing out that http://snowheads.com/ is for snowheads. This is J2ski :D

Occasionally some snowheads do stumble in here, looking for some civilised company :D

There's nothing like a bit of a ponder.... :lol:

Hi all,
Aren't us city dweller/novices allowed to call you guys snowheads? ) I was told that lingo was ok in these parts..don't worry, I was fully aware of what site I was on!

And never any problem with pondering, just didn't want it to go unanswered!

All the best,
Laura