New tour operators clash over leisure travel market growth

During the Sofia travel fair in February 2007, Corina and Aleksei Hinkov met Livent Aydin, general manager and a shareholder in the biggest tour operator on the Turkish coast. As a result, the plan to launch Tez Tour on the Romania market was hatched, reads Business Magazin.
The Romanian office of is the fifteenth on Tez Tour’s map.
Tez sold 11,000 travel packages last year, operated 5 charters to Turkey from Bucharest and Timisoara, and reached a 15% market share from charter flights to Turkey in its first year on the market. The Romanian market already included several travel agencies that specialised in holidays in Turkey, but the low prices, due to the large volumes Tez Tour operates, and the contracts sealed with a high number of reselling agencies, were the main factors that positioned Tez among the market leaders within its very first year.
The high volumes are doubled because the operator also owns a hotel network, Amara Resorts (with 4,000 places in 6 hotels in Belek region). Moreover, Tez does not work as a retailer, which means that it does not sell travel packages to individuals, but only through reselling agencies. In Romania, Tez now has the most extensive network of resellers, out of 1,200 travel agencies on the market; the Hinkovs have sealed contracts with 1,100.
If Aleksei Hinkov, who last year sold tickets to 11,000 holidaymakers to Turkey, believes he can attract around 15,000 tourists this year, this means he aims to absorb half of market growth.
Another new tour operator that entered the Romanian market this year has already targeted the remaining market share.
This is Lithuania’s Novaturas, which operates under the FlyNova brand in Romania.
Raimondas Useckas, CEO at FlyNova, believes the agency he runs could see 26,000 customers this year, to destinations that include Tunisia, Crete and Antalya, and during the winter period, to the Canary Islands and Egypt.
Despite being positioned as a tour operator, Novaturas says it will not reject individual customers.
Both Tez Tour and Novaturas officials are confident in the growth potential of mass travel abroad through charters. Tez Tour and Novaturas are the first international tour operators to directly enter the Romanian market, whereas until now the only formulas under which Western operators such as TUI or Thomas Cook sold holidays in Romania were authorised agencies.
Romanian tour operators’ chances to grow may decrease due to tougher competition, but Alin Burcea, manager and owner of Paralela 45 agency, believes “weapons” can be found to counter this battle.
Useckas says Novaturas’ power to negotiate is greater than any other Romanian tour operator’s, because it negotiates rooms at a centralised level, just like Tez Tour.