Connexions, a provider of rewards and benefits to US frequent travelers, was sold for $135 million by Travel Leaders Group to Affinion Group, a Connecticut-based marketer.

Affinion, run by Apollo Management, was formed in 2007. One of its recent deals include the 2007 acquisition of identity theft detection service CardCops.

Affinion has plans to go public now, in a $400 million IPO filed in May. Travel Leaders is a travel agency.

Harris Williams’ David Joncas, Jim Reinhart, Eric Reimers
and Matt Volinsky worked on the deal for the seller.

The deal comes as hospitality sector pros monitoring the industry say that metropolitan travel and business travel has picked up with the recession rebound, but that middle-class customers are yet to hit the road and populate other hotels and motels.

Additionally, thanks to plummeting real estate values, much of the deal activity in the hospitality REIT space has been from distressed buyers acquiring bankrupt properties—although, experts say most deals for attractive real estate continue to see multiple bidders.

Other businesses dependent on regular travelers have seen consolidation. The rental car space has seen recent upheaval, with Zipcar, an hourly service, taking out a UK-competitor with a similar business model. A broader deal battle between industry titans Hertz and Avis is ongoing as the latter seeks to still up the bid to subsume Dollar Thrifty.