The Private Equity Firm Behind Some of France's Smartest Travel Startups
Skift Take
If you're a French travel company right now, you very much want to be on Montefiore's radar, a $2.74 billion fund that's become a kingmaker through the Nov Tourisme fund.
For 16 years, private equity firm Montefiore Investment has avoided the spotlight while making small investments in travel and other sectors — with its best-known travel deal being its sale of Auto Escape Group to Expedia Group. But in the past year, Montefiore has gotten a very public role in helping several French travel companies escape the pandemic trough.
When 16 French institutional investors put together an approximately $210 million (€173 million) fund to help the country's tourism and leisure businesses during the pandemic, they sought applications from a few dozen firms and institutions to manage it. Last October, Montefiore was picked by the French Insurance Federation to lead the new fund, called Nov Tourisme - Relance Durable France.
Montefiore is a Paris-based private equity firm that manages about $2.74 billion (€2.3 billion) of equity, about 43 percent of which it raised in 2019.
It separately has discretionary management of the Nov Tourisme fund, deciding which French companies in the tourism, restaurant, and leisure sectors the fund will bet on.
The Nov Tourisme fund's check sizes average between $6 million (€5 million) to $18 million (€15 million). The fund takes equity or quasi-equity stakes, usually becoming a minority shareholder. The fund has deployed about $85 million (€70 million) of investment so far.
Travel companies the Nov Tourisme fund has invested in include Voyageurs du Monde Group, a travel agency group whose holding company is Avantage. Nov Tourisme invested as part of a $155 million (€130 million) fundraising announced in March that brought in investment firm Certares, with participation from existing investors Crédit Mutuel Equity, Bpifrance, and BNP Paribas.
"It has a fantastic, profitable business model when there isn't a pandemic," said Eric Bismuth, CEO of Montefiore Investment. "It has zero debt and plenty of cash."
Voyageurs du Monde puts together bespoke, complex, multiday trips with its Voyageurs du Monde and Comptoir des Voyages brands. They help make travel agents more efficient through tech tools, with agents planning and servicing vacations through a mix of calls and chat-based inter
