Travel agency Paralela 45, one of the top five players in the travel market, posted 18 million-euro turnover in 2005, an increase of some 25% from the previous year, says chairman Alin Burcea.
He owns 51% in the company, while his wife has the rest. Burcea added the agency had budgeted 21 million euros in revenue for this year, as a result of the increase of the business travel market as well as of the sale of properties in Neptun and Predeal.
"We will sell a block of flats in Neptun and one in Predeal. We estimate to get some 4 million euros for each of them. Anyway, we are hoping for a total of at least 5 or 6 million euros (from the sale of the two blocks i.e.)," Burcea stated.
Paralela 45 owns two blocks of flats and a villa in Neptun and plans to begin construction of two more buildings, one in April and one this autumn.
The two buildings will be completed in 2007 and will entail about a 6 million-euro investment.
The rent for a flat in such a building may be as high as 5,000-6,000 euros during the summer, Burcea says. Paralela 45 made approximately 3 million euros in revenue from event planning for corporate clients in 2005.
The incoming sector (travel packages for tourists that come to Romania) accounted for merely 600,000 euros last year, a Paralela 45 official explains.
The growth last year, Burcea says, came from charters.
"People got scared away by bird flu last year. But they will surely travel. We have charters for the Costa Brava (Spain), Crete, Rhodes, Corfu, Antalya, Hurghada, Sharm El-Sheikh routes," the Paralela 45 official said.
Charters usually target medium to high-income tourists and not the luxury markets.
Charters entail one or more travel agencies buying a number of seats for a specific flight, bus or train from transportation operators. An agency that booked such seats is bound to pay for them even if it may not have sold them all to tourists. andreea.groenendijk@zf.ro
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