Are tour operators stronger together? One newly-formed investment group, focused on building a portfolio of day tour operators, is determined to prove they are.
Walks founder Stephen Oddo has partnered with Charaf El Mansouri, co-founder of immersive experiences brand DHARMA, to re-acquire his former company, now called WalksDevour, which he sold to Hornblower Group in 2021, along with two other major Europe-based operators: Amigo Tours and Askos Tours.
The deal brings the three companies together under “Flagship Group,” a newly launched investment and holding company for larger tour operators. The group, which is not affiliated with canal tour operator Flagship Amsterdam, is backed by Los Angeles-based private equity firm Shamrock Capital. The terms of the transactions remain undisclosed.
The leaders of each company — Roisin O’Sullivan, CEO of WalksDevour, Emiliano Tufano, Founder and CEO of Askos Tours, and Jose Arozarena, CEO of Amigo Tours — will each be staying on to continue leading their respective brands under the new Flagship Group structure.
Are There More Acquisitions to Come?
According to an official statement, Flagship Group expects to announce additional partners in the coming months as more founder-led operators join the group. However, Oddo is quick to emphasize that they’re not looking to acquire more companies simply for the sake of it. “We’re not approaching this as a volume acquisition strategy,” he says, “we’re really trying to be selective about the businesses we invest in.”
So what types of companies are they looking for?
The acquisitions already completed show some a common thread: larger sightseeing operations offering walking tours and excursions. WalksDevour and Amigo Tours operate in multiple destinations, while Askos is focused on Pompeii and southern Italy. Oddo cautioned, however, against drawing conclusions about the types of businesses they seek to acquire.
“it’s really about the people,” he said. “Is there a long-term compelling story here? Is there a growth story here? Is there strong leadership? Is there something that they’re doing, some core competency that we could lean on in the group?”
Oddo did remark that a company needs to be of sufficient scale to justify the time and capital invested in the acquisition process. He added that $500,000 in EBITDA is a general guideline, not a strict cutoff, noting that exceptionally fast‑growing businesses could be attractive even if they fall below it.
“We’re already fortunate to have a lot to work on with these businesses today,” says Oddo. “Our remit right now is, you know, we have these three great businesses that have the capability to to scale from where they are. So if we can invest and create the resources necessary to help them do that, then that’s what our priority is.”
Is This the Next Step in the Consolidation Wave?
The tours, activities and attractions sector of travel is known for being highly fragmented, comprised of many small businesses, with no globally-recognized brands or brand standards. However, as experiences come more to the fore, both in traveler prioritization and in tech adoption, and growth in the experiences sector outpaces the rest of travel, the conditions are becoming ripe for more consolidation, with industry insiders predicting a wave of consolidation coming to tours and experiences.
There have already been emerging global brand platforms and some consolidation in the sector. Food tour operator Secret Food Tours acquired several companies in 2022 and 2024 and now runs tours in over 120 cities. Hop-on hop-off business operator Big Bus Tours has made a few acquisitions over the past few years, including Westcoast Sightseeing in Vancouver and Tour Dubai Group in 2024, and IO Bus and Touristation in Rome in 2025.
But the vision is not to build a global super tours brand, at least not yet, according to Oddo.
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Individual Brands or a New Superbrand?
The Flagship Group approach is to enhance and grow individual brands rather than collapse them into a single identity, Oddo explains: each brand is “doing something special… why would you take away the brand name or the essence of what that is and try to standardize it into one thing?”
Oddo draws an analogy to the restaurant industry vs. hotels: hotel brands aim for name recognition and succeed on standardized consistency, such as the Marriott brand. Experiences brands, in contrast, derive value from being unique and specialized, making a single global umbrella brand counterproductive.
“Does anybody know Major Food Group, the brand? No, but you probably know Carbone, right? A really great quality brand, but you don’t necessarily want a Carbone in every city,” says Oddo. “Likewise, experiences brands are more like chefs than hotels: they’re far more appealing when they retain their own unique, specialized identity, rather than being folded into a monolithic label.”
Askos Tours, for example, specializes in a deep, archaeological focus on the southern Italy region, particularly Pompeii. Amigo Tours stands out for its sightseeing tours across Mexico, Spain, and more recently Japan. WalksDevour, with its focus on curated small group tours across Europe and a growing presence in North America, has already been through multiple M&As and emerged as a healthy, enhanced and unified brand that can be leveraged to accelerate growth across the broader portfolio.
What’s Changing, and What Stays the Same?
Beyond the brand names themselves, Oddo acknowledges there is room for some operational standardization: he identifies administrative functions such as financial reporting and HR as natural places to start.
Two key areas which may surprise observers that are not currently a priority for standardization? Tech and distribution.
Moving all the brands to a single booking system platform, for example, is not on the to-do list. Oddo notes that, since reservation‑technology (res-tech) platforms now communicate reliably through standards such as OCTO and open APIs, swapping systems is a costly, disruptive effort that must be justified by a clear upside.
“At this stage, if things are going really well with a business, enforcing a change to any technical system has to come with a real benefit, and not everything we’re doing is necessarily complementary,” Oddo says.
Likewise, there are no plans to consolidate the brands in order to re-negotiate terms with distribution partners. Oddo notes that the relationships with Viator, GetYourGuide and other platforms remain “critical” and “growing,” and that each brand already has strong partnerships in place. “At the moment, everybody has a really great working relationship, and that’s the way we like to keep it.”
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Can You Roll Up Day Tours?
The opportunity seems obvious enough. Tours and experiences remain extraordinarily fragmented, and bringing operators together could create meaningful advantages in technology, marketing, purchasing and back-office operations. A larger group could also have more leverage with the major OTAs, even though Oddo insists that is not part of the game plan.
But the bigger question is whether the traditional roll-up playbook can work in day tours. This industry is notoriously local and dominated by founder-led businesses, where much of the value lies in the product, the guides, local relationships and the culture behind the experience — all hallmarks of the brands Flagship Group has acquired so far.
The company isn’t just betting that it can acquire good tour operators. It’s betting that those companies can be worth substantially more together than they are apart, and without losing what made them successful in the first place. Whether that proposition can be proven at global scale may be the bigger story to watch.
About the Author
Janelle Visser is Arival’s Managing Editor, event MC, and the producer and host of The Best Part of Travel podcast. She comes to Arival from the world of tour guiding, and has nearly 10 years of experience leading day trips and multi-day sightseeing and adventure tours throughout Canada, as well as an academic background in communications, international studies and tourism management.
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