Great Southern Travel acquires Columbia agency

Canterbury Travel and Tiger Travel Associates was founded in 1975 and is located in Columbia. Great Southern Travel Executive Vice President/Managing Director Kris Conley said part of the appeal of the agency was its main account: the University of Missouri.

“We’ve always been interested in that account, but they’ve been loyal to Canterbury for the last 20 years,” he said. “We didn’t buy the agency just for that account of course, but it did appeal to us.”

The acquisition, terms of which were not disclosed, came after Great Southern decided to target the Columbia market.

“We’d been actively looking for agencies in that part of the state for the last couple of years, and this agency was well-established and had been around for a long time,” Conley said.

The eight staff members at Canterbury will remain, and co-owners Barbara Davis and Gudrun Parmentier will serve as co-managers of the office.

This will be Great Southern Travel’s 15th office in Missouri, with locations stretching north to Kansas City and east to West Plains. The company is a division of Great Southern Financial Corp. and has its headquarters at 3424 S. National Ave.