Since the start of the month, low cost air tickets have been available from Romanian online ticket stores. In general, the volume of online sales is low, so tentative growth is anticipated, however, forecasts indicate future growth, writes this week's BUSINESS Magazin.
At the beginning of 2008, there were over 15 Romanian websites that sold airline tickets, while online bookings accounted for 4-5% of the market.
It was easyJet that helped kick-start the market in autumn. The British company signed agreements with Amadeus and Galileo, companies that sell Global Distribution Systems (GDS) to travel agencies, which allow tickets to be directly booked and sold from travel agencies. According to the company's press release, easyJet signed the agreement with Amadeus in order to stimulate airline ticket sales to businesspeople, a segment which accounted for 20% of easyJet's sales in the autumn of last year.
The move by the British company attracted disapproval from some of its competitors, particularly from Ryanair, which took the opportunity to say that easyJet is not a low cost company, but a covert regular airline company. GDS, which predominantly addresses business travel, are somewhat in contradiction to the low cost concept, which is based on the sale of tickets without any intermediaries, on the company's own website, precisely so as not to have cost increases.
By signing the contract with Amadeus, easyJet has entered the databases of online ticket agencies, which will improve their range of available offers, not only on their own websites, but also at travel agencies that use Amadeus and Galileo systems, as is the case for regular line airlines.
In turn, Gheorghe Racaru, the manager of low-cost airline Blue Air believes sale of tickets on websites other than Blue Air's is a normal way to boost online presence.
The entry of low cost companies into online sales systems is expected to not only boost the sales of these companies, but also the market share held by online airline ticket sales.
Razvan Antoni, Amadeus representative in Romania, believes the market share of online ticket sales will more than double in 2008, and reach 12%, from the current 5%. "From now on, there will be major leaps in this field," according to Antoni, who says the market has strong prospects, since foreign groups in the field are beginning to show an interest in this segment.
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