Alto Tours, a travel agency controlled by businessman Florin Tancu (age 36), has sold 25% to Danish investment fund Weco Travel and Transport Central & Eastern Europe, in order to continue to grow via acquisitions, after it had purchased Tiriac Travel last year. Tancu did not care to reveal how much he received for 25%, or how much he paid for Tiriac Travel, merely saying that tour operators are evaluated by profitability. Profit margins of travel agencies stand at around 4%. As a result, with turnover worth 3.5 million euros, Tiriac Travel could have made a profit of around 140,000 euros. The entry of Weco Travel (which also owns shares in travel agencies in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Lithuania and Russia) as shareholder in a Romanian player is a market first, as the main tour operators are Romanian-held. Alto Tours is among the top 15 travel agencies on the market, considering the top 10 players posted turnovers worth 10 to 38 million euros last year. "We want to become a top five company within the next five to ten years. We are looking to coagulate as many independent entities within an affiliated business tour operator (i.e. the company is affiliated to the Radius global network) and we primarily target companies with business worth around three million euros," Tancu says. The ING.Development company (not related to ING Bank) operates on the travel market under the name of Alto Tours and posted net profit worth approximately 180,000 euros last year, alongside turnover worth 6.4 million euros, according to the Finance Ministry.
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