First Australian-owned Stella Travel Services was jilted at the altar by Worldchoice. Now it has failed even to get up the aisle with Advantage Travel Centres.
What is an Australian group to do with these fickle UK agency consortia?
Advantage has refused to confirm courtship was even in the air, let alone called off this week. But the sighs - sorry, signs - have been unmistakeable.
Without wanting to be brutal and reduce a relationship to economics, there were sound reasons for the pair to get together - yet possibly sounder ones for not doing.
Stella has travel products - but not as many UK retail outlets as it needs to sell them - and Advantage has 400 members with 700 high-street travel agencies.
In addition, Advantage fears being squeezed in a difficult market between the big two travel groups - TUI Travel and Thomas Cook - and its independent agency-consortium rival Worldchoice, which is poised to merge with the Travel Trust Association.
Worldchoice-TTA will supplant Advantage as the country's biggest agency consortium, assuming the deal goes through as expected in September.
But what might have been a simple tale of industry consolidation was complicated by Stella's parentage. This is a vertically integrated travel group, owning tour operators and retailers in its biggest markets. Its business model may not mirror TUI's and Thomas Cook's, but vertical integration is anathema to independent travel agents.
Whatever guarantees Stella may have offered, Advantage members were likely to fear a takeover would result in pressure to sell Stella products, put their existing deals and relationships at risk, and compromise their independence.
As a marriage it was always going to prove tricky.
Where does this leave Triton Travel Group? The commercial tie-up between Advantage, Worldchoice and what used to be the Global Travel Group of agencies - now part of Stella - was supposed to develop into a super-consortium.
In reality, the writing has long been on the wall for what is merely a set of joint commercial agreements between rivals. Advantage made clear it would not be part of such a consortium more than a year ago. Global's takeover by Stella last autumn drove a nail in the Triton coffin. Worldchoice's anticipated merger with the TTA, on the cards since February, confirms the diagnosis.
It is conceivable Triton may have been resuscitated by Advantage getting together with Stella. But Triton appears to be an alliance held together by the string of soon-to-expire commercial deals.
Or am I wrong?
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