The Travel Corporation To Be Acquired by Asset Management Fund
by Daniel McCarthy
The Travel Corporation (TCC), one of the travel industry’s legacy brands, has agreed to be acquired by Apollo Private Equity, TTC announced Tuesday morning. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The news means that TTC will now move away from the Tollman family for the first time in its 104-year history, a huge change for one of travel’s most storied brands. The deal will include most TTC brands including Uniworld, Contiki, Insight, and more. Most notably, it will not include Red Carnation Hotels, one brand that will remain under the stewardship of the Tollman family.
In a statement announcing the news, TTC Chairman Brett Tollman said, “without a next generation to lead TTC, the time has come in our strategic succession plan to select a new owner.”
“We will support a seamless transition and are confident the team at Apollo will continue driving the business forward to meet growing global demand for touring, river cruising, and specialist and adventure travel,” Tollman said.
TTC was founded by Stanley Tollman, the son of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants who escaped Czarist Russia to South Africa. Tollman would start what would become TTC with the purchase of the Nugget Hotel in Johannesburg in 1954, eventually growing the company into an international travel powerhouse with more than 40 brands. When Tollman passed in 2021, TTC had more than 10,000 employees spanning 70 countries worldwide.
Apollo is an international alternative asset manager with over $670 billion in assets under management as of the end of March 2024, including stakes in Las Vegas’ Venetian Resort, Diamond Resorts, Yahoo, and more. Michele Raba, a partner at Apollo, said that she believes that “we can take [TTC] to the next level” under its management.
“We’d like to thank the Tollman family for trusting in our good stewardship of the business they’ve built for more than a century and look forward to an exciting next chapter in which TTC can serve as a platform for growth,” Raba said.
