Black Tomato founders sell majority stake to employee ownership trust

The founders of Black Tomato, the bespoke luxury travel operator known for high-end, highly customised itineraries, have sold 75% of their shares into an employee ownership trust, Skift reported exclusively. The structure gives the founders liquidity from the sale while preserving their control over strategic decisions, and is understood to qualify them for a potential tax benefit tied to the ownership trust model.

Employee ownership trusts have become an increasingly attractive exit route for founders of premium, service-heavy businesses who want liquidity without ceding control to private equity or a trade buyer. The model is particularly suited to businesses like Black Tomato, where the value proposition rests heavily on staff expertise, client relationships and a distinctive service culture that a traditional financial buyer might be tempted to strip out in pursuit of margin.

The move also lands amid a broader wave of private equity interest in specialist travel and hospitality, including consolidation in short-term rentals and boutique hotel groups. Founders watching that trend, and wary of losing control or diluting the qualities that built their brand's premium positioning, may see Black Tomato's structure as a template. It offers a way to de-risk personal wealth while betting that continuity of leadership and culture protects long-term brand value better than an outright sale.

What to watch: whether other luxury travel and hospitality founders follow with similar employee ownership structures, how Black Tomato uses the proceeds to fund expansion, and whether the trust model becomes a more common feature of exits across the wider luxury services sector.

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