Touring Eurolines, Romania’s second-largest international passenger carrier, took over Nova Turism travel agency, creating a tour operator, Nova Turism-Touring, whose annual turnover should initially amount to some 7 million euros a year.
The officials of the two companies did not disclose the value of the deal. “We’ve been in talks with Nova Tourism for about a year now and we finally decided we needed to consolidate our tourism department by taking over this company, because we are primarily known as a passenger carrier. We had no reason making offers to other agencies because we realised Nova Turism was the best choice,” Mihai Anastasiu, general manager of Touring Eurolines and one of the two partners of this firm said. Touring Eurolines logged 14 million-euro turnover in 2003 (compared with 7.8 million euros in 2002), 4 million euros of which were generated by the tourism business. Nova Turism last year posted 3 million-euro turnover, down from the previous year when it made 3.7 million euros.
“We are going through a time of subsistence for the Romanian tourism and the merger is one step towards providing better services to our clients. We want to build a powerful brand name for the new tour-operator,” Marcel Badescu, general manager and owner of 50% of Nova Tourism said. Badescu is also the honorary chairman of the National Association of Travel Agencies in Romania (ANAT).
Nova Tourism-Touring, the new entity produced by the merger will be run by Badescu and all the agencies of the two companies will operate under the new brand. “The number of tourists this year will remain the same as in 2003, because the contracts were closed late last year. In 2005, however, we will bring more tourists than in 2004, especially from Germany and Israel,” Anastasiu says. The merger will not generate layoffs. The former head of Euroline’s tourism business, Iulian Andrei, left the company two weeks ago to start his own business. This departure actually sped things up towards the merger.
Nicolae Demetriade, head of Happy Tour, a tour operator, whose 2003 turnover is estimated at 16 million euros, says the takeover of Nova Turism by Touring Euroline is a good move for the Romanian tourism. “It is good to see an operator the size of Nova Turism joining forces with one of the leading carriers in Romania. This will lead to consolidation on both markets, though mainly on the travel agency segment, which is much too divided among small players that will not be strong enough to live up to the challenges in the next few years. I can’t stop wondering how in the world can these small agencies cope,” Demetriade says.
Catalin Panaitescu, executive manager of Double T, the third-largest international passenger carrier in Romania says Deutsche Touring GmbH, Eurolines’ German partner made a very good move and consolidated its position in Romania this way.
stelian.negrea@zf.ro