OREANDA-NEWS. August 2, 2007. S7 Tour, part of the S7 Group of Companies, has agreed to purchase 90% of the shares in “TURENERGOSERVIS Travel Agency” CJSC (TES). The purchase of the large tour operator, specializing in trips to Egypt and Turkey, will allow an increase in the sales of tour packages toward these countries. This will double in size the gross share of S7 Tour in the Russian tour services market, and sales will reach 120,000,000 USD.

”Our strategic goal in the next 2 to 3 years is to gain the leading position in the dynamically growing tourism market,” said Svetlana Antoshkina, Chairperson of the Board of Directors for S7 Tour. “We are convinced, that the synergetic effect from simultaneous development of all principal branches in tourist industry: Air transportation, tour operation and tour agency services under single management will allow us to meet the challenges we are facing”.

The long-term plan of development for S7 group of companies in the tour services market includes: "Creation of a specialized charter airline, equipped with a modern aircraft fleet (according to the contract signed in April of this year with the "Boeing" Company the first 10 new 737-800 planes will be put into service in the years 2010 and 2011 (4 in 2010, and 6 in 2011), also we have the right to purchase 10 more planes of this type under the same terms);
"Achieve the leading position in the tour operator services market (development of our own tour products, increase the number of offered destinations and the acquisition of core tour operators);
"Essential development of a network of sales offices and achieving the first place in Russia in the volume of retail tour services (unification of S7 Tour and S7 Ticket, development of bulk sales for standard tour packages and wide use of opportunities offering consumer credit, S7 Ticket has more than 70 offices in all large Russian cities).

TURENERGOSERVIS (TES)

In the market since 1995. According to the “Turinfo” Information Agency’s rankings, based on financial results in 2006, the “TURENERGOSERVIS Travel Agency” CJSC achieved the 15th spot with revenues of 59,390,000 USD. The amount of tourists serviced in 2006 reached 126,600.

The major destinations were: Egypt, Turkey, India, and also Spain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Tunis, Cuba, Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic.

Large offices of TES operate in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and in a number of other Russian cities. Also TES closely cooperates with more than from 8,000 agencies. For service of its own clients it has a number of exclusive contracts with the largest hospitality companies of Turkey, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

S7 TOUR

The tour operator of S7 Airlines with 12 years experience in international operations - S7 Tour is a new type of travel agency of “Siberia" Airlines which has appeared on the Russian tourist market at the end of 2005, when the tourist agency changed status from being a structural division of the airline, to become a daughter company.

In 2006 around 40 thousand tourists took advantage of S7 Tour services, and the sales of the company for 2006 has reached the level 40,000,000 USD.

The basic specialization of S7 Tour is international tourism: Germany, Bulgaria, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Oman, Turkey, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, exotic Seychelles, Maldives Islands, Mariana Islands, and also two new S7 Tour tourist destinations - Viet Nam and Montenegro.

S7 Tour has an extensive branch-office network. It has opened offices in 12 Russian cities (Moscow, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Chelyabinsk, Perm, Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul, Tomsk, Omsk, Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Khabarovsk).