LONDON, Sept. 16, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- lastminute.com (Nasdaq:LMIN), the leading online travel site in Europe, today announces that it will repurchase the 70% shareholding in lastminute.com Spain from its joint venture partner Sol Melia (Pink Sheets:SMIZF), the world's largest resort hotel chain. lastminute.com and Sol Melia will expand their extremely successful relationship, established in 2001, with an enhanced strategic commercial agreement.
lastminute.com will pay Sol Melia a total of 6 million part of which is deferred until December 2003 for its 70% shareholding. This will enable lastminute.com to integrate lastminute.com Spain with Travelprice Spain, acquired in July 2002, in order to leverage fully the potential growth in the Spanish marketplace.
Spain is recognised as one of the fastest growing European online travel markets and is projected to grow to 1.3 billion by 2005. As a destination, Spain is the premier holiday market for Europeans and strengthening lastminute.com's presence in Spain is key to the further growth of its position as European leader in the online travel sector.
The enhanced strategic commercial agreement includes several initiatives designed to extend the customer proposition and sale of Sol Melia hotels via the lastminute.com Group. Sol Melia will be the first hotel chain to add lastminute.com's dynamic packaging functionality to its website, solmelia.com. This will provide real-time customised packaged tours to its customers using Sol Melia hotels product and lastminute.com flights product. lastminute.com will continue to feature Sol Melia products in its dynamic packaging functionality and its hotel search engine and will develop special promotions and pages on its global sites.
Brent Hoberman, CEO, lastminute.com said: "The repurchase of lastminute.com Spain will allow us to fully integrate our businesses in Spain and more aggressively target the Spanish market growth opportunity. The enhancement of our relationship with Sol Melia will help us accelerate our global hotel and dynamic packaging offering and deliver even more great value deals to our customers."
Commenting on the new deal Sebastian Escarrer, Vice President and CEO of Sol Melia, said: "We have established a strong relationship with lastminute.com since our initial agreement in August 2001 and are delighted to be able to extend it further. Sol Melia is strategically focused on maximising revenue through the rationalisation of its distribution channels. This strategy is clearly paying off as our online sales have increased by 261% in the first six months of this year alone. lastminute.com's understanding of our business strategy and our mutual long term commitment to dynamic packaging makes this agreement a natural next step for both of us to grow sales and better meet customer requirements."
About lastminute.com
lastminute.com is Europe's leading online provider of travel and leisure solutions. Based on the idea of matching supply and demand, it offers consumers last minute opportunities to acquire airline tickets, hotel rooms, package holidays, car hire, entertainment tickets, restaurant reservations and home delivery, speciality services, gifts and auctions.
Operating across multiple markets, lastminute.com has established approximately 15,300 supplier relationships and over 7.5 million subscribers to its weekly newsletter.
lastminute.com also owns and operates online brands holidayautos.com, travelprice.com, degriftour.com, travelselect.com, travel4less.co.uk and eXhilaration.co.uk and has a stake in LCC24.com, the online vehicle for Lufthansa City Center, in Germany.
More information available at www.lastminute.com/ir
About Sol Melia
Sol Melia is the leading hotel company in Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean, the third largest hotel company in Europe and number ten in the world ranking. The company provides more than 350 hotels in 30 countries under its Melia Hotels, TRYP Hotels, Sol Hotels and Paradisus Resorts brands.