“This year has been really challenging because it was the year when our strategy of the last two or three years paid off in that we will end the year as the leading online travel agency in Romania,” Remus Visan, managing director of Paravion.ro and of bavul.com (a Turkish portal it took over this year), told ZF in an interview.
“I hope to see us end the year with EUR46 million revenue.”
Turkey, via bavul.com, will generate 30% of the sales, while Romania will contribute the rest. The two countries remain strategic markets as far as investments are concerned.
“I expect Turkey to account for a greater share of the business than Romania as of 2017. (…) We will be among the top ten in Turkey in two or three years.”
He explains the company’s performance was because of consolidation of the brand on the markets opened two years ago such as Hungary, Bulgaria and Cyprus. Moreover, the Romanian communities in Italy, Spain, and UK are getting used to Paravion products and to using its services. Another factor was this year’s acquisition of the bavul.com portal in Turkey.
Paravion was acquired by Spanish private equity firm GED in 2010, which is also the majority shareholder of travel agency Happy Tour.
Remus Visan, the founder of Paravion and also a minority shareholder, says the brand will be used in Europe mainly. It already has a presence in Hungary, Bulgaria, Cyprus, UK, Italy and Spain.
“We will promote the Paravion brand in Europe and take bavul to the Middle East and western Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Our technology enabled us to replicate the business model in other countries very easily in just two weeks.”
Visan says the agency is happy with its expansion so far.
“We are also looking at Ukraine and Russia for Paravion, we have a partner in the area but would rather wait and see how things go to be able to enter. Those are very difficult markets.”
Paravion is a top five online travel agency in Central and Eastern Europe.
“We would like to be number one at least in the Central and Eastern Europe in five years. The brand will help us on each market, as will the technology behind the platform, but most of the help will come from the team,” Remus Visan said.
Paravion and bavul.com team currently numbers 55 members.
The acquisition of bavul.com was Paravion’s first outside the country. The seller was Turkcell, the largest Turkish telecom operator. Turkcell founded bavul.com in 2011 and developed it in Turkey, where it has grown to more than 300,000 users.
“If opportunities arise, we will consider acquisitions. This is how we work, theoretically. It depends on how big the respective market is. An acquisition makes sense if the online market is big. We use the local market as a reference and usually think it needs to be about five times bigger than that.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)