In February 2020 Maven completed the sale of Midlands based Attraction World, which is one of the UK’s largest theme park ticket specialists, supplying many of the world’s leading travel brands. The realisation, via a secondary buyout led by the CEO Paul Stobbs, generated a 1.9x total return for Maven clients.
Since Maven originally backed the MBO of the business in December 2010, Attraction World has enabled millions of customers to pre-book tickets for around 5,000 attractions in over 50 countries, including amusement parks, sightseeing tours, theatre shows and experience days.
In 2016, Attraction World made the strategic acquisition of Day Out With The Kids, which was the UK’s biggest website and online community for family attractions and children’s activities and was generating over 100 million page views per year.
Despite market pressures, including the collapse of one of its key clients Thomas Cook, the enlarged group continued to perform strongly and, during the period of Maven’s investment, increased annual turnover to £67 million. The business has also secured a number of industry awards, including ‘Best Ticket Provider’, ‘Best Agent Friendly Brand’ and ‘Best Holiday Essentials Provider’.
We are pleased with the return generated for investors from the sale of our stake in Attraction World. The travel industry has faced many challenges in recent years, but the management team have worked hard to refocus and restructure, whilst maintaining a high level of service to clients.
Andrew Ferguson, Partner at Maven
