Cox & Kings Acquires LateRooms From TUI Group

TUI Group has made good on its pledge to sell a noncore asset, UK-based LateRooms.com, and Cox & Kings has acquired the hotel-booking site, Skift has learned.

There has been no announcement about the deal, and the transaction between Hanover, Germany-based TUI Group and Cox & Kings, headquartered in India, is believed to have taken place earlier this week. The terms of the transaction haven’t been made public.

Subsequent to this story, a spokesperson for the TUI Group confirmed the LateRooms sale.

LateRooms.com states that it has access to 150,000 hotels globally and offers discounts “up to 50%.”

Cox & Kings, meanwhile, focuses on packaged tours and is particularly strong in its home base of India.

LateRooms was the last remaining online consumer site in the TUI Group arsenal and it announced in May that it had hired bankers to auction off what it considered a noncore asset.

Cox & Kings could conceivably use LateRooms to develop an online travel agency in the UK and India and would likely be able to leverage some of LateRooms’ inventory for Cox & Kings’ tour and wholesale businesses.

There is a bit of a disconnect, however, as Cox & Kings bills itself as offering luxury tours while LateRooms.com specializes in discounted, last-minute hotels.

LateRooms sells its inventory using the retail, or commission, business model — as opposed to the merchant model — along the lines of the much larger Booking.com.

Cox & Kings did not respond to requests for comment.