Newly-founded tour operator Anex Tour has high-flying plans to launch on the German market next summer with its own charter airline, stepping up competition in the leisure travel business, fvw reports.
The Turkish-owned tour operator is already a major player in the Russian outbound market with two million customers a year, with every third customer booking a holiday in Turkey. Now the company aims to repeat this success in Germany with an experienced management team, broad portfolio – and its own flights.
CEO Serhat Ko?kar has signed up several well-known names to run the German tour operator. Managing directors are Dirk Burneleit and Hakan Bakar, a former ?ger Tours manager, while Markus Leutner, a long-serving Thomas Cook short-haul product manager, is head of the package holiday programme, assisted by Joachim Heek, formerly with Alltours and other tour operators.
In an interview with fvw, Ko?kar said the initial summer 2017 programme will feature holidays in Spain, Greece (Crete), Bulgaria, Croatia, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Thailand, Goa, Egypt and Dubai will be added for winter 2017/18.
The most ambitious move will be to launch flights with the group’s own airline in the already highly competitive German leisure travel market next summer. From next April, Azur Air would fly with three B767s, with 330 seats, from Berlin, D?sseldorf and Munich to diverse Mediterranean destinations. The airline will be run by Peter Wenigmann, who was at LTU for 20 years and most recently headed Swiss-based Privat Air.
Ko?kar explained: “We are the first Turkish-Russian tour operator to make a step into Germany. We might be new in Germany but we are a well-organised and financially healthy group. We are a traditional, quality-orientated tour operator with its own hotel contracting and own product.”
The CEO, whose family owns the Anex Tour group, declined to say how much will be invested in the Germany launch but stressed: “Germany is the largest travel market in Europe and we want to be present here for a long time.”
Flight capacity
Ko?kar did not disclose any target figures for the German market but the flight capacity indicates Anex is aiming for some 100,000 customers in the first year. He stressed that Anex did not plan to win business with low prices. “We will not come with dumping prices.”
Travel agents will play a key role, said Burneleit. “We want to be a transparent and reliable partner for travel agents.” He said the tour operator is currently in talks with chains, consortia and OTAs for sales agreements.
Leutner added that the Germany launch is helped by the fact that Anex will operate its own air capacity. “This own capacity underlines that we are taking this seriously and want to serve many destinations throughout the year,” he explained.
Azur Air will operate as a separate unit and is currently preparing to gain an AOC licence for Germany. While the company plans to operate Azur Air flights from Berlin, D?sseldorf and Munich, it will cooperate with other leisure airlines at other airports.
Anex Tour’s origins lie in incoming agency activities in Antalya which were expanded with a tour operator in Russia as early as 1998 to target the fast-growing market. Over the last decade subsidiaries were set up in several CEE markets, including Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
This year, however, Russian tour operators have been heavily impacted by the bans on travel to Egypt and Turkey. But Anex is much less dependent than some competitors on the Russian market to Turkey, which now only represents about one third of its overall bookings.
Ko?kar stressed the market entry in Germany is not a reaction to these developments. “We have been following these plans for four years and intensified them last year, as we have our own infrastructure with incoming agencies in many important destinations.”
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