Turkey’s Royal Hotels has bought into specialist tour operator Bentour while Delphin Hotels has increased its existing minority stake in the company.
The Stone Group, which trades as Royal Hotels, has acquired a 10% stake in Bentour, which is based in Switzerland but mostly active on the German market.
The Turkish group operates six hotels, including well-known properties such as the Adam & Eve, the Dragon and the Taj Mahal, and will open a seventh next year. “With the new partnership, Bentour has guaranteed access to larger contingents in top properties,” explained CEO Deniz Ugur.
In parallel, the Delphin Hotels group has increased its existing stake in the tour operator from 18% to 28%. The company, with seven hotels on the Turkish Riviera, has been a shareholder in Bentour since 2007.
The combined 20% stake had been held by Kuoni but was sold back to Bentour founder Kadir Ugur and his son Deniz last year as part of the Swiss group’s exit from the tour operator business. Kadir and Deniz Ugur will thus retain 62% ownership of the company, which was founded in 2004.
Deniz Ugur told fvw: “We know Stone and Delphin as reliable and strong partners. They offer products that we can sell well through Bentour Reisen.” Kadir Ugur emphasised that “such partnerships are especially valuable in a challenging year like this one. Together with the expansion of our portfolio and cost optimisation, they are important pillars for a healthy enterprise”.
Just one day earlier the company announced it had streamlined its staff by getting rid of its five-person travel agency field sales staff in Germany as well as four internal sales employees. Travel agencies are now handled through the service centre in Zurich.
However, Deniz Ugur stressed that Bentour has stable revenues this year despite the strong drop in demand for Turkey thanks to diversifying to other destinations such as Cyprus, Spain, Portugal and Greece, which now account for about 30% of revenues. Last year, the company’s revenues dropped by 9.5% to €86 million and customer numbers declined by a similar amount to 100,000.
