It first entered the US market in July04 when it bought StudentCity.com. Since then, it has bought eight businesses in the student travel space. First Choice Student Travel now ‘provides leisure travel experiences’ to 200K American and Canadian students a year.
The student business sits with Canada’s Signature Vacations. Signature had its best ever financial half, with the bulk of the gain coming from ‘core tour operations.’ Overall, North American specialists made a £14.3m profit during W05/6, a 29% improvement on the previous winter.
While the student business was affected by hurricanes, terror attacks in Egypt saw a 27% drop in passenger numbers in European specialists. But Morocco (+14%) and Greece (+19%) took up some of the slack.
First Choice’s other North American niche is escorted tours, kicked off six months ago with two deals - Grand Exhibitions and INTRAV. First Choice Expeditions is part of the activity sector. Grand Exhibitions is trading well in a high growth/strong margin environment while INTRAV ‘is being restructured. First Choice said INTRAV will break even this financial year, excluding restructuring costs. In 05 it lost $7m.
Other First Choice H1 coverage:
First Choice Mainstream lifts marketing spend
1m+ bednights for First Choice B2C bedbank