Thayer's Hemmeter on SPAC comeback and space for a new travel brand

You could be forgiven for thinking that travel companies might shy away from taking companies public via special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Many will have seen industry peers have a rough ride back in 2022 and question what has changed.

For Chris Hemmeter, managing director of Thayer Investment Partners, the travel industry is in a very different place now. In an interview with PhocusWire, he said there is already a resurgence in potential SPACs attributable to the macro environment and amount of money investors have been sitting on which is "creating a little bit more interest in alternatives for companies."

And the profile of a travel company that might be ready to go public via this route? They must be profitable, said Hemmeter and even "somewhat boring."

"Understandable products where you can really see the slow march in growth and expansion of margin."

Hemmeter also discussed how much experimentation is going on in the industry currently despite how hard funding is to come by. 

"There's more entrepreneurial activity, more creative destruction, more new ways of thinking about the way value chains function than I've seen in the last 20 years. It's quite dynamic and the numbers may not tell the full story." 

See below for the full interview with PhocusWire's Linda Fox where Hemmeter also talks of the potential for a large new B2C travel player to emerge.