Hurling legend’s partner sells hotel booking business for €60m
This week the Dublin businesswoman sold her 11-year-old hotel booking business for a cool €60 million.
After founding Needahotel.com in her one-bedroom Blackrock, Co Dublin, apartment, she built the business into a €100m-plus turnover enterprise. Her clients are travel agents and airlines.
Ms Newman learned the business during a five-year stint with a British company which sells hotel rooms at a wholesale level before starting her own firm at 25.
The company employed 75 staff at the Glenageary, Co Dublin, base when it was sold to Cendant, the biggest travel and property services company in the US and a major global market figure.
The staff’s shock at learning of the sale turned to joy when each member was handed an envelope containing a cheque worth several thousand euro.
They were told the windfall was tax-free, as the company had already paid the income tax to the Revenue Commissioners. Staff were also told their jobs were safe.
Ms Newman’s big break came in 1998 when Ryanair agreed to allow her have a desk in its call centre and take the business of any travellers looking for a hotel room.
This was two years before the advent of the airline’s own online booking service, Ryanair.com and she copper-fastened her position with an initial contract giving her exclusive rights to future online hotel booking business.
Almost every Irish travel agent and three of every four British agents use the company. In 2005 it signed up 6,000 German travel agents. And it does all the online bookings for Ryanair, Aer Lingus and FlyBe, Britain’s third biggest low-cost airline.
Last year Ms Newman and company managing director Andrew Collins were shortlisted in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the international company category.
Ms Newman’s partner DJ Carey is also a businessman, owning two companies.
His promotions firm takes bookings for public appearances by the Kilkenny hurler and the other, DJ Carey Enterprises, supplies hygiene products to pubs, restaurants and hotels.
He is separated from his wife Christine. The couple have two sons.
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