Hotel Specialist STR Buys Scotland's LJ Research

Hotel industry research and benchmarking firm STR has acquired Edinburgh, Scotland-based full service research agency LJ Research, for an undisclosed sum.

LJ Research, established in 1998 as Lynn Jones Research, specialises in analysing customer feedback and provides insights covering the tourism, travel and hospitality industry. The company runs LJ Forecaster, a hotel performance monitoring system, and Visitrac, and online survey engine. STR says the buy will allow it to provide more comprehensive solutions to clients, particularly in the government, tourism and destination sectors.

LJ Managing Director Sean Morgan (pictured) says joining STR will enable his firm to expand and improve upon its services, and comments: 'Both of our companies are focused on helping clients compete by providing data and insights that are not only thorough, but actionable. Above all, STR's high standards for accuracy and confidentiality are in line with our own data integrity standards'.

Robin Rossmann, MD of STR, says the company's long-term growth strategy is 'to elevate its services from solely providing data to providing solutions'. He adds: 'LJ Research has a proven track record in providing high-quality statistics and insights for its clients. Perhaps most importantly though, it was the high quality of the LJ team and the similarity of their culture with our own that convinced us this was a great decision'.

STR was formed by Randy and Carolyn Smith in 1985 in Nashville, TN, USA. The firm opened a UK subsidiary, STR Global Limited, in 2008; and added Analytics and Sector Analysis divisions in 2009 and 2014 respectively.

Web sites are at www.ljresearch.co.uk and www.str.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.