Amadeus/Opodo to sell Karavel???? What are these rumours about?

Are Amadeus / Opodo potentially selling Karavel (a French tour operator group) to Barclays Private Equity? 

These rumours have been published (today) by:

• Tim Hughes - The BOOT
• HotelMarketing.com
• Mario Gavira - OnlineTravelCrunch

Here is how the story unfolded:

Today I got a message from someone that I don’t know - and have no way of telling whether it was a correct email address as it came from a web form on this site so we don’t have email headers. One thing for sure, they were contacting me with the intention that I publish the sale rumour on this blog.

In fact the message was:

this news is “hot from the oven”, you might be interested in picking it up in your blog. Here some more details: (a web link followed)

Something else I know that the user read my privacy policy before sending me their rumour. Quite why anyone would read my privacy policy is a mystery - unless they are wondering whether I will stick with it. As it happens to be our corporate privacy policy that we use that covers all our customer information - and all our customers’s customers (including booking information etc) it is quite strong.

Hang on - here is the line in our privacy policy that stops me publishing too much:

Unless we have your express consent we will only disclose your personal data to third parties if this is required for the purpose of completing your transaction with us

That is a pretty standard line for reservation systems….. but, hey, I suppose that if the purpose of the transaction was to get a rumour printed in a blog…. then actually we can disclose personal data as that would be necessary in order to have a named quote - which obviously needs a name! (Too much time working in system development - my mind works logically)… OK, lets continue then.

Back to the blogs that have published
Back to the three previous blog posts a second. Lets see if there are any factors in common. Here they are:

• Tim Hughes / The Boot calls the story a ”rumour”. Wise move. I will go with the rumour concept. (Tim describes himself as “part lawyer” so I assume he knows what he is doing)
• HotelMarketing calls the story a “forthcoming announcement” - but also calls it a rumour just to be sure.
• OnlineTravelCrunch sounds quite authoritive “Amadeus about to announce the sale of Karavel”…. but then calls it a rumour as well….
• Both Tim Hughes and HotelMarketing refer to the story from OnlineTravelCrunch…. so looks like a single source story…. not sure journalists like those.

Confusion reigns!
So we have a single source story from a brand new blog with only 3 posts that involves some big industry players…. not something that the large travel papers will touch really until it is confirmed true through official channels….. and some blogs that should know better have gone for it. They all probably received the same email as I did.

Sherlock Holmes
I love a good mystery. So I have a name from this person who sent me the rumour. I also have their corporate email address (again I reiterate - I can’t demonstrate if this is being faked or not - but by now I am beginning to think it is)…. According to the name and the email address - and a bit of hunting in Linkedin (is that allowed?) - the person who sent me the rumour is a regional product director at Opodo (trust me, that didn’t take much hunting - I am not that good a detective - its called a search box)

So what exactly are Opodo directors doing fuelling industry rumours about themselves? Something fishy going on.

[If you want to check what I have written, do a little detective research for yourself - start at the single source mentioned in all blogs that have published so far…. and follow the clues…. there is enough there to get you started without the shortcut that I had (which was a name and corporate email address). (And it is because these clues are so obvious that I felt confident in posting the detail I have….. because the individual can hardly say they were trying to keep everything quiet)] 

Final thought
Hunting for a second source to back the sale rumour up….. and found this page
http://alize.finances.gouv.fr/servlet/phase1.NotificationEn

Its a French Government site that lists acquisitions that need to be notified to the French Finance Minister. Here is an interesting entry:

14 september 2007 - BARCLAYS PRIVATE EQUITY FRANCE / KARAVEL C2007-139
Type of concentration : Acquisition of control
Concerned activities : travel agencies
Interested third parties are invited to send their comments ON this operation before: 28 september 2007

So the rumour looks true. I had rather hoped it would be more mysterious - however I am still confused about the how this rumour is going around the web. Someone needs to get their PR firefighting upto speed!

Do you want me to turn into Travel Valleywag or can I get back to other stuff like essays on using the web to create sustainable competitive advantage? Vote below!

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