10/2019

London, United Kingdom (8 October 2019) – Northstar Travel Group announced it has acquired CAT Media, located in East Grinstead, England, outside London. CAT Media is a leading global multiplatform business-to-business marketing services, information and events business serving the meetings and incentive industry.  

CAT Media owns leading brands serving the UK and global MICE industry including Meetings & Incentive Travel (M&IT), Association Meetings International (AMI), Meetpie.com, an online membership portal for meetings professionals, M&IT Challenges, M&IT Awards, Intellectual Capitals, Venue-Source.com, and ConventionSource.com.

“The combination of the CAT Media portfolio with Northstar’s market leading The Meetings Show in London creates a strong multiplatform marketing services, information and event portfolio in the MICE sector,” said Thomas Kemp, Chairman & CEO of Northstar Travel Group.  “Both Northstar Meetings Group and CAT Media have been industry leaders not only through our respective brands, but through the innovative ways we’ve advanced them. We’re excited to merge the best practices of both through this acquisition.”

“We are pleased to complete this transaction with Northstar to create scale and a multiplatform media, events, and marketing services business serving the UK and European MICE and incentive industry,” said Martin Lewis, Managing Director of CAT Media. “After 32 years of developing our activities in this fast-changing market, this is a good time to marry our products with Northstar to give our business the critical mass and enable it to become part of a truly global media footprint in the travel and events business.”

“We’re delighted to welcome the CAT Media brands to the Northstar family,” said David Chapple, Portfolio Director, Northstar Travel Media UK.  “Taken together with the Meetings Show, the UK’s largest MICE-industry hosted buyer show, and Northstar’s leading brands including Meetings & Conventions,  Successful Meetings,  Incentive,  Meeting News and SportsTravel in North America, and M&C Asia and M&C China in Asia, the addition of CAT Media extends our breadth and depth in service of supporting the meetings industry.”

Northstar received legal advice from Jones Day.  New Media Law served as legal counsel to CAT Media. Perissos Developments served as exclusive financial advisor to CAT Media.

About Northstar Travel Group

Northstar Travel Group is the leading B-to-B information and marketing solutions company serving all segments of the travel industry including leisure/retail, corporate/business travel, corporate and sports meetings, incentives, hospitality, and travel technology.

Northstar is the owner of well-known brands including Successful Meetings, Meetings & Conventions, Incentive, M&C China, Business Travel News, Travel Procurement, The Beat, Travel Weekly, TravelAge West, Travel Weekly China, Travel42, Axus Travel App, and Web in Travel.

The company produces more than 80 face-to-face events in 13 countries in retail travel, hospitality, corporate travel, travel technology, sports travel, and the meetings & incentive industry.  Leadership events include the Phocuswright Conference, ALIS, The Business Travel Show, the largest corporate travel event in Europe, The Meetings Show, the largest meetings industry event in the UK, Web in Travel, CruiseWorld, Global Travel Marketplace, and TEAMS, the leading sports travel event.

In addition, Northstar owns Phocuswright, the leading research, business intelligence, and event producer serving the travel technology industry.

Northstar Travel Group owns the Burba Hotel Network, the leading producer of hotel investment events globally, including ALIS, the largest hotel investment conference in the world produced with the American Hotel & Lodging Association in Los Angeles each year.

Northstar is also the majority shareholder in Inntopia, the leading SaaS e-commerce software, CRM database marketing and predictive analytics business serving the mountain destination, golf, activities, hospitality, and specialty destination travel markets.

Based in Secaucus, NJ, the company has offices in New York, NY; Stowe, VT; Denver, CO; Edwards, CO; Burlington, VT; Los Angeles, CA; Costa Mesa, CA; Lombard, IL; and global offices in London, Singapore, Beijing, and Shanghai.

Northstar Travel Group is owned by funds managed by EagleTree Capital.

About EagleTree Capital

EagleTree Capital, formerly Wasserstein Partners, is a New York based private equity and investment firm. It manages capital on behalf of global institutional and individual investors. EagleTree’s private equity funds invest primarily in the media and business services, consumer products, and water and industrial sectors. For more information, visit www.eagletree.com.

About CAT Media

CAT Media is Europe’s largest specialists in the meetings and events industry, with print, digital and face-to-face audience engagement products developed over the company’s 32-year lifespan. CAT Media dominates the UK, international association and Indian markets with quality magazines, web sites, direct marketing and live events. CAT’s web-based products include venue search engines like VenueSource and Convention Source while its footprint has expanded recently into social media and video services in addition to email and direct mail to bring buyers and suppliers together with modern and engaging content delivery. The highly successful M&IT Challenge events in agency, corporate and association sectors have underpinned the industry’s biggest and most prestigious awards recognition program and the only industry awards event independently audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. With 1300 attendees, the M&IT Industry Awards is the biggest evening in the European events calendar. The event has raised more than £1 million for charities Save The Children and Meeting Needs.

CAT Media has been the architect of many industry initiatives like National Meetings Week and was a founder of the industry charity, Meeting Needs, while its British Meetings & Event Industry Survey is the definitive buyer-side market research study.

To learn more about CAT Media go to www.meetpie.com 

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Louisa Watson, Director of Marketing at Wyboston Lakes Resort is to feature in the first Women to Watch in Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Index 2019.

Developed by campaign group WiH2020 and launching on 8 October, the index will feature inspiring female professionals, including leaders who occupy senior and board positions. The organisation aims to increase women's representation in leadership roles, showcase talent in the industry and share advice for advancement.

According to WiH2020, only 10% of CEOs across hospitality, travel and leisure are women, though 36% of direct reports to board members are female, representing a promising pool of future leaders.

Louisa Watson, Director of Marketing, Wyboston Lakes Resort says, “It’s a great honour to be included in this new index. With over 20 years of marketing experience, I hope to be able to continue to mentor and give career advice to an even greater number of ambitious young women. I believe that the greater diversity of talent recruited into this exciting and dynamic industry, the better choice of future leaders the sector will have.”

For more information, please visit www.wybostonlakes.co.uk/business

Capita Travel and Events are one of the first travel management companies to receive an ISO22301:2012 accreditation for their business continuity management system.

Capita’s business continuity management system was recognised with the highly sought-after international framework following an audit for quality.

The company has put a range of process and initiatives in place, with regular test scenarios to continually review and improve the plan. They have recently launched ‘grab packs’ containing instructions on what to do in the event of an evacuation or crisis.

“We have robust business continuity plans in place that cover everything from loss of power, IT system outages, adverse weather, structural damage or loss of an office, gas leaks, this list goes on. These plans are key to ensure that we can respond to an incident with speed and agility mitigating any impact to the customer whilst ensuring we have insured the safety and wellbeing of our employees. The plan means we are operational 24/7 and have a contingency for 365 days a year. More and more customers are requesting this at the tender stage so knowing we have this in place gives them the confidence in our commitment to delivering consistently high levels of service,” explained Kirsty Given - Head of Risk & Assurance.

“It is fantastic to have achieved this accreditation and we are already seeing the benefits as our internal processes are also more efficient. As one of the only travel management companies with this, it really shows our focus on smarter processes, resilience in the marketplace and vision to create better outcomes.”

This ISO accreditation joins the three others in quality management (ISO 9001:2015), environmental management (ISO 14001:2015) and Information Security (ISO 27001:2013).

Capita Travel and Events is providing a more varied offering to its travel and meeting arrangers and bookers as it secures an increasing amount of unique hotels and venues in the Collection Partnership.

Capita launched the Collection, the name given to hotels typically independently-owned or as part of a small chain, to provide quality venues and an enhanced choice compared to main stream chains which we believe is unmatched by any other travel management company.
“We were one of the first travel management companies to offer this level of variety and, since we started the Collection proposition several years ago, we have grown the partnership to include over 300 hotels, venues and apartments in around 200 towns and cities across the UK,” explained Jake Lawley, Head of Collection proposition.

“This access to independent hotels and venues gives our customers a very different and real choice for travellers to take an occasional break from the typical mainstream international branded properties. Through our contracting expertise we ensure our support of customers governances: duty of care, safety, security and quality guarantees are met and as a general rule of thumb the Collection portfolio represents great value and so we support that in our customer preferencing in fact our Collection Partners enjoy 17% higher share compared to non-group affiliate peers, a good indication of the support we give to independent brands and the confidence our travellers have in the Collection.

The proposition is a win-win all round as our partnership offers a cost-effective platform for exposure to compete with some of the bigger hotel chains, and provides our customers with the choice, quality and a different traveller experience that they are looking for. We are selective and have some real gems that stand out in our portfolio, yet we are always on the lookout for new partners to join.” There are great benefits to be had. Our data shows that new joiners to the Collection partnership see an average increase of 99% in monthly room night volume, an increase of 101% in monthly spend levels and a
69% increase in the amount of customers using their properties.

Venues can join different membership levels and work in close partnership with Capita as they continually identify development opportunities and provide feedback. One of these initiatives was the Partnership Engagement Day, the two-day event held at Manchester United in June. Capita welcomed numerous partners from the Collection for seminars on wellbeing, technology, and data analytics, as well as workshops to share best practice and tips.

“Since joining Capita’s Collection, I’ve seen an increase in market share, revenue and room nights. It’s been a really positive partnership and I’m looking forward to continuing our close working relationship.”- Barbara Thomas, Danubius Regent Park.

“As a new partner to the Collection I have received a wonderful welcome and amazing support by the team. There are lots of partnerships available in the market, but since joining the Collection partnership I’ve received more face to face contact, site visits by the team, office visits and proactive prompts to  ork together than any other partnership we are currently involved in. This amazing level of support instantly drove us to sign up to the partnership for the rest of our venues. The Capita team have proved to be a positive and pro-active extension of my sales team, and the Collection event alone provided relevant and inspirational content that has driven through new ideas of developing our business further - priceless contributions to our business and further evidence of a true partnership purely focused on creating the very highest levels of event experience for Capita customers.” -Tony Shotton, Fabulous Fan Fayre.

There are still have gaps for unique, one-of-a-kind venues and those that have a large space available for conferences. If you are interested in learning more about our Collection Partners or would like to join the partnership, please contact Jake Lawley on 07599 548 338 or travelandevents@capita.com.