Innovative Travel Acquisitions Newsletter

Issue: # 6

December 2007

Greetings!

Greetings from Alpharetta, Georgia. In 2007 multiples of between 2.5 to 5.5 times recast EBITDA were paid for profitable tour and travel related business's of all types and sizes across North America. Terms are more important than price is, so be certain to use an expert in negotiations.The devil is in the details. Be sure to "take your head out of your heart" when negotiating, it is a businesses transaction, nothing personal.

Buyers do not pay for potential. How much money a seller invested into their business is not a factor of buyers evaluation. The sales price is based on the sellers previous 2 years profits and the performance of the business in the 12 months following the closing.

ITA will be conducting a seminar to help owners determine current value with travel attorney Mark Pestronk in Atlanta Georgia in April 2008. We will send out a seminar announcement e-mail in the near future.

Recent Closing !

In November we represented French Wine Explorers Inc., a leading wine tour operator, in the sale of their business to a motivated buyer from outside the industry that we had in our database. This is a fine example of how a narrow niche business can be very fun and profitable.

To view more cool niche listings, visit our website

www.tvlacq.com

STAFF BIOGRAPHIES

Bob Sweeney, President

Bob was born and raised in Long Island, New York. He was a college basketball player at Roanoke College in Virginia. He graduated from Roanoke in 1981. He spent 9 years on Wall Street with Oppenheimer and Company and Lehman Brothers. His wife Colleen and 3-year-old, Sean Liam, enjoy spending time with their Portuguese Water Dog Obaz and hiking.

Doug Haugen, Broker

Doug was born in Rockford, IL and grew up in North Dakota. Playing ice hockey in the winter and fishing the Minnesota Lakes in the summer was the typical lifestyle growing up. His first job was a Medical Laboratory Tech working on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota helping the Sioux Indians. After a successful career in the medical field, he worked in sales for the industrial waste water and environmental treatment industry for several years in New Jersey. Life took him to Atlanta where he has been working for Innovative Travel Acquisitions since 1998.

Annie Pound, Broker

Annie was born and raised in Erie,Pa. She spent 5 years in Columbus Ohio as a Vet Tech after graduating from high school. For 7 years Annie held a career in the mortgage and real estate industry before joining Innovative Travel Acquisitions. She and her husband, Justian, enjoy cooking, traveling and training their French Mastiff for obedience competitions.

Send an E-mail to admin@tvlacq.com with a request to be placed on the seminar announcement list.

How do you know when to sell your company, and how can you overcome the emotional attachment to your baby?

Bill Rasmussen, co-founder of ESPN, on the best time to cash out.Published November 2007 in INC Magazine

The right moment to sell is different for everyone and depends on your financial goals and the performance of the business. But I think that most entrepreneurs wait too long to sell. They overvalue their companies, turning down one offer because it's not quite good enough, and then another offer because it's not quite good enough. Pretty soon they've blown it. Selling a company is kind of like playing the stock market: You never know when you've reached the high point.

You need to be realistic and accept that no one is going to be as enthused about your company as you are. Your son may want to be the next great pitcher for the Yankees, which is wonderful when he's 5 or 6 years old, but sooner or later realism has to set in. If you think your company is worth $5 million and everyone says it's worth $3 million, then there's probably something to that pattern.

I'm not an operations guy, I'm an entrepreneur. Starting over again with a new idea or a new challenge is the exciting part. In all the companies that I've been involved with, there has been a point when running the company becomes ho-hum. For me, that's when it's time to move on and do something new. That's what happened at ESPN in 1979, when we brought in a big corporation, Getty Oil, as an investor. They hired a lot of folks from NBC, and very quickly the corporate culture arrived. When it starts to feel too corporate to me, I start thinking about my next company. It was easy to make the decision to leave.

Other times, the decision has been harder, but I think the key to letting go is realizing that your business won't stop being your baby when you sell. I've heard people say a thousand times that I sold ESPN too early. It's now worth billions of dollars, but I have no regrets about selling it when I did. If I hadn't sold, I would never have started any other companies. Plus, it was extremely fun when I got to put a check for several million dollars in the bank. Since then, following ESPN has been like watching my baby grow up to become a world-renowned brain surgeon.

Bill Rasmussen has started 15 companies since 1959. His latest is CollegeFanz.com, a sports news site he launched in September.

The sale of your business should be a glorious victory , not an agonizing and long defeat.

Sincerely,

Bob Sweeney

bob@tvlacq.com

Innovative Travel Acquisitions

Featured Article by Bill Rasmussen

How do you sell your company, and how can you overcome the emotional attachment to your baby?

Need help with your GDS negotiations?

Our brokers highly recommend using the services of the travel industry specific attorneys that we have worked with through the years to get the results you want.