The Estonian Novatours team will develop the Romanian representation of the company. In March, the leadership of the Estonian unit leaves for Bucharest, and from mid-April the Romanian Novatours office will begin its first flights. In a year, the company hopes to win over 20 thousand customers in Romania.
After the investment group Enterprise Investors became the main owner of Novatouras Group, the company headed for expansion in Central and Eastern Europe. According to Raimondas Ushekkas, Executive Director of Novatours in Estonia, the company’s European expansion will begin in Romania.
In Romania, the number of tourists using the services of a charter business does not yet reach 1% of the country’s population, which is about 22 million people. In Lithuania and Latvia this figure is 6%, in Estonia – 9, in Finland – 18. If the number of clients of the charter business in Romania grows to at least 3 – 5%, this will mean more than a million new customers. “That’s as much as charter tourists in all of Finland,” Usheckas explains.
In its first year of operation in Bucharest, Novatours expects to increase the company’s staff to 28 people, serve 20 thousand customers and increase the company’s turnover to 10 million euros. In the future, according to Usheckas, the performance of the company will double annually. Romania in the field of tourism is at the level that Estonia was in 2001.
As soon as Novatours consolidates in Bucharest, the company will immediately begin to offer departures from other Romanian cities: Cluj and Timisoara. Novatours already has contracts with travel agencies, airlines and hotels in Romania. The company will enter the Romanian market with five directions: Turkey, Crete, Tunisia, Egypt and the Canary Islands. In 2009, Spain and maybe Italy will be added. Promotion of the Novatours brand will begin in Romania in March, and the March tourism exhibition in Bucharest will be a good starting point.
In parallel with entering the Romanian market, Novatours is working on expanding to other countries.
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