Voyage Prive plans a trip to the market

Voyage Prive, the up-market travel website that has invested heavily in TV advertising, is understood to be considering its own trip to the stock market via an initial public offering (IPO).

Sources said the business picked French bank BNP Paribas to underwrite the IPO.

Voyage Prive, which started in France in 2006, is run by Denis Philipon, a former Lastminute.com executive.

Lastminute.com went public at the height of the dot-com boom in early 2000 and was acquired by Travelocity, a unit of Sabre Holdings, which at the time was listed in New York, for about £577 million in 2005.