(Bloomberg) — Hotel platform Selina agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check company Boa Acquisition Corp.
The combined company will be valued at $1.2 billion, according to a statement Thursday that confirmed an earlier Bloomberg News report. The transaction includes a $70 million equity placement from South Light Capital, MORE Investment House and Ronald Cohen, co-founder of Apax Partners.
The transaction is expected to close first half of 2022.
Founded by Rafael Museri and Daniel Rudasevski, London-based Selina targets Generation Z and Millennial travelers. It operates vacation rentals as well as co-working spaces in what it calls “buildings with character,” according to its website, which also advertises wellness and other events that are hosted at its locations.
The company targets non-traditional travel destinations picked by locals. In addition to the U.K. and U.S., countries with Selina locations include Portugal, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama and Brazil.
Selina has opened 24 hotels since the coronavirus pandemic began and plans to expand into Australia, Thailand and Morocco, Museri said in an interview. Selina is opening its first hotel in Spain in the first quarter, he said.
After the emergence of the delta variant of Covid-19 and now the omicron variant, Museri said he expects travelers will have to contend with future variations of the virus.
“We’re going to experience many more variants and the world is slowly learning how to deal with that,” Museri said. “Twenty-five to 35 year olds are less panicked about it. When they are allowed to travel, they travel; when you don’t allow them to travel, they travel domestically.”
The company focuses on remote locations rather than on key cities and has benefited from an increasingly mobile workforce. Use of Selina’s co-working spaces is twice what it was in 2018, Museri said.
Boa raised $230 million in its February initial public offering. It had a mandate to find businesses that provide technology solutions to the real estate industry, the special purpose acquisition company said in its listing document.
The combined company will operate as Selina Hospitality Plc, with its shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SLNA.
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