Leisure hospitality firm Sterling Holiday Resorts has forayed into adventure tourism with the acquisition of the Mumbai-based Nature Trails for an undisclosed amount.
With this acquisition, the Thomas Cook subsidiary would be adding five resorts spread across 103 acres in places such as Durshet, Sajan, Kundalika and Dahosa in Western India.
Ramesh Ramanathan, Managing Director, Sterling Holiday Resorts, said: “The funding for the acquisition has been done through internal accruals and is pegged at less than ₹50 crore. The acquisition would add to our 24 resorts and ability to offer adventure holidays.’’
Promoted by Hari Divekar, Nature Trails has resorts, which offer trekking, camping, rappelling and river rafting, which are short distances from major cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Surat and Nashik.
This is the first acquisition made by Sterling Resorts to widen its travel package portfolio.
“We are debt-free now and will not rule out further acquisitions. Apart from adventure tourism, there could be new areas like jungle tourism and safaris that we could look at in the future,” added Ramanathan.
Besides, Sterling Holiday Resorts is also planning to spread its operations in the overseas markets in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and West Asia through both green and brown field projects.
It has expanded its travel services from time share to non-time share packages in the past four years, positioning itself as a holiday company rather than a time share major.
Last year, it was acquired by Thomas Cook and since then it has been an independently managed subsidiary of the travel company.
“We will also help Thomas Cook in strengthening its domestic traffic through our packages in the non-time share category, which are branded under Sterling Holiday Resorts,’’ added Ramanthan.