Park Resorts and Parkdean to merge to create holiday giant
CARAVAN holiday park operator Park Resorts is merging with rival Parkdean Holidays to create a £960m camping and caravaning giant with 73 sites across the UK.
Park Resorts’ owner, the private equity group Electra Partners, said the company’s sites on the east coast and in the north west would compliment Parkdean’s sites in the south west and Scotland to form a business with UK-wide coverage.
The combined group will serve around 1.8m customers, with a turnover of £370m and underlying earnings of around £92m.
Electra and Parkdean’s private equity owner Alchemy Partners will both retain a stake in the enlarged group, the companies said.
The merger, once cleared by the competition authorities, will the largest deal in the holiday park sector since 2000, when Bourne Leisure bought Rank Holidays.
It also comes after a string of deals in the sector this year, including the £2.4bn sale of Center Parcs to Canada’s Brookfield Property Partners in June.