France-based hotel booking and payments platform CDS Groupe has created a new holding company as it looks to expand operations around Europe, including making more acquisitions.
The company has created S4BT – Solutions for Business Travel to bring together its six current brands under a single banner to offer “a coherent, end-to-end solution for all players in the business travel sector”. Most of these brands have been acquired by CDS over the past few years.
The companies now under the S4BT banner are: CDS, online booking tool Goelett, Germany’s Corporate Rates Club (CRC), Travel Media Solution (TMS), enterprise resource planning specialist SIAP and Methodica, which offers services for TMCs and corporates.
CDS said in a statement that it had a “clear ambition to become the European leader” in offering corporate travel services. The creation of S4BT was a “key stage” in the group’s development with more acquisitions “under review to strengthen its international presence”.
The company added that S4BT collectively handles more than over €800 million in annual bookings and employs 450 staff across operations in five countries - France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Croatia.
As part of the restructure, Ziad Minkara, who is currently CEO of CDS Groupe also takes up the same role at S4BT.
“The creation of S4BT is a natural step in our strategy of consolidation and international expansion,” explained Minkara. “It allows us to bring together our brands, expertise, technologies and people to build a strong, agile European group focused on user needs – while remaining independent.”
Under the S4BT structure, each of the six brands retains its identity, business expertise and teams, while “benefiting from the group’s shared momentum”.
“This structure ensures both local continuity and strategic alignment across Europe. S4BT’s ambition is clear: pool resources, accelerate innovation, develop new technology synergies, expand service offerings in each country and deliver more value to the industry,” the company added.
In an interview with Deplacements Pros, Minkara said S4BT’s acquisition strategy “focuses on the three major European markets: the United Kingdom, France and Germany”.
“For the UK, this is indeed under way,” he added. “We are working on two signatures in parallel, because at any time a negotiation can fail. We are truly in periods of intense negotiation.”
Minkara said that it was planning to complete the acquisition of a UK-based company during 2025.
“We must understand our pace of development: we are in a structure which has the capacity to absorb one country, one brand, one entity per year,” he added. “This is exactly what we have done for the past three years, and we are now in year four.”