David Babai

David Babai, the travel entrepreneur who founded and built Gullivers Travel Associates (GTA), eventually selling it to Cendant in 2005 for $1.1 bn, is re-entering the wholesale tourism business by taking on the chairmanship of G2 Travel (www.G2-travel.com).

The top management are all former GTA staff, who have left senior positions in other travel companies to create the start up. 

G2 will concentrate on group travel, with key origin markets being Asia, Middle East, Australia, North America and Europe.  The G2 team  believes that this segment of the market offers the opportunity to create a sustainable competitive advantage (unlike individual travel, known in the trade as FIT, which has been rapidly commoditised over the past few years) because there is substantial value in the creativity of tour design, customer relationships, product knowledge, negotiating ability, operational expertise and client service. 

The global management team has offices in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta and London.  With several top people based in Asia, the group’s head office is in Hong Kong. The senior team has been carefully hand-picked for its average 20+ years experience in business development, client service, supplier relationships, operations, systems, financial management and IT.

David Babai said: “The emerging economies are growing rapidly and with new wealth comes the desire to travel abroad.  For the inexperienced traveller, long haul destinations are incredibly exciting but a huge challenge owing to language barriers, cultural norms, difficulty in getting visas or simply the desire to find the food one likes to eat. Our team really understands how to deal with these issues and provide a memorable experience for the traveller at an acceptable price point, whilst earning a fair return for the effort and knowledge required.”

After selling GTA in 2005 to Cendant (which later became Travelport), Babai signed a non compete agreement, which prevented him from re-entering the industry for a period of six years.  Last April, almost on the expiration date of his restrictions, GTA was sold again, this time to Kuoni for $720m.

David Babai said: “The key people are  very able and I was immediately impressed with their plan. It is a huge pleasure to work again with a team I respect and trust, in a business I love.

David Littlefair, heading up the Bangkok Office concluded: “David is a true leader, a great visionary and an exceptionally astute businessman.  We are fortunate to be able to benefit from his guidance.  When we last worked with him, all of us found the atmosphere extremely stimulating and we were very proud of the business we built.  When the opportunity presented itself to do so again, it was too exciting a challenge to turn down.”