BANGKOK, 22 June 2018: Tour East Holdings has acquired the 51% stake in Tour East Thailand that was held by the company’s founder, Prasert Isvarphornchai.
In 2014, Holiday Tours and Travel, the main shareholder in the Tour East network in Asia, sold its stake to JTB for USD 18.2 million.
Under that agreement the newly formed Tour East Holdings, owned by JTB, acquired a 49% share of Tour East Thailand, while Prasert retained his 51% stake.
Responding to email questions, Tour East SVP sales and marketing international, Chris Bailey, who is based in Singapore, confirmed Prasert relinquished his 51% shareholding in Tour East Thailand in May and has since left the business.
Prasert founded the Thai company under the Tour East brand in 1972. Today, Tour East Thailand handles around 100,000 holiday packages annually.
Tour East Holdings Ltd CEO & president, Shigeyuki Suzuki, is now the managing director of Tour East Thailand (TET). The Tour East Holdings CEO will spearhead a major restructure and re-engineering of the business.
“It will see the destination also become a regional hub for our activities including group product development, procurement, marketing and MICE market development. Certain aspects of the group sales function will also be relocated to Thailand in the future,” Bailey explained.
“The business will also benefit from total implementation of our full operating system and on-line booking tools which the group has invested heavily in.”
He squashed rumours that TET would move to the JTB office location in Bangkok.
“There is no truth in the rumour that the business (TET) will move location, or that JTB employees have moved into TET. Indeed, we have just embarked on a major refurbishment and modernisation of the current offices to allow for expansion and business growth.”
Tour East Thailand has a suite of offices in Bangkok’s Silom-Rama IV business district at the Charn Issara Tower.
