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At the end of November ‘Tour alliance’ is relocating in three directions: part of the stuff moves to the central building of the holding ‘Bureau of travels on Taganka’, some managers – to the office of ITS, the rest – to the building of agencies ‘Kuda.ru’. According to Natalia Vasilieva, general director of ‘Tour alliance- media’, it is only known that the senior management will be at the central office of the company.
In the mid October ‘Tour alliance’ holding bought 27% shares of ‘E-tours’ (ITS) from the LTU Touristik, which was a part of the German corporate group REWE. (see news as of 14.10, 18.10 и 20.10). The senior management was planning to reorganize its structure by handing operating activity to ITS, leaving only VIP- and FIT-tourism for itself. It was planned that the main task of ‘Tour alliance’ would be retail sales developing.
The question of how LTU Touristik will participate in new projects is still unknown. The situation was explained by Nadjib Mazdooriar, head of Russian tourism coordination department, in an exclusive interview to BANKO: ‘Starting from the next season, we will offer a new assortment on the Russian market for ITS- Bulgaria and Tunisia, Greece, Montenegro and Croatia. There are 12 destinations that are planned. What is more, we are banking on ‘Kuda.ru’ and expect to increase the number of supermarkets BiIlla up to 40 untill the end of the year’. According to Mazdooriar, the interest of LTU Touristik to Russia did not fade but, to the contrary, the company expects to make it to the top of operators in our market.
Meanwhile the observers express different opinions about further plans of the alliance. ‘The new season can be successful only if ITS Company manages to keep its competitive prices’, - believes Denis Tifofeev, the head of the company ‘Golden century’, who earlier managed ‘E-tours’. Dmitry Gorin, general director of ‘Inna tour’ believes that the basic criteria of the human factor and correct personnel politics. ‘From one side, acquisition of a large market outlet – agencies ‘Kuda.ru’ can promote the tour operating product of ITS’, says an expert. ‘In spite of the fact that ‘Tour alliance’ is now distributing manpower between two companies it can negatively affect its cooperation with agencies’. According to Mr. Gorin, the main problem is that it is difficult to explain the agency the advantage of contacts with a new formation, because people got used to work with concrete staff rather than with brand.
