The largest Finnish tour operator Aurinkomatkat-Suntours (a sub-company of the air carrier Finnair Oyj) is purchasing Calypso - a leading travel agency of St. Petersburg. The deal price is kept in secrecy but the experts estimate it at around US$1 million.
      
      Calypso travel agency specialises on individual VIP travellers and has nearly 15 thousand customers annually. Aurinkomatkat-Suntours is a provider of complex tours with the annual number of customers reaching 360 thousand. The annual turnover of Aurinkomatkat-Suntours was 261 million EUR in 2006.
      
      The Russian travel market participants think that takeovers of the Russian travel companies by the Western “colleagues” are rare deals. One of the reasons Aurinkomatkat-Suntours is entering the Russian North-Western travel market is the high demand for direct and transit tours to Finland.
      
      Vice President of the Russian Union of Tour Industry Sergey Korneyev comments on the deal in the following way: “For Calypso it is logical move in continuation of the long-term cooperation with Finnair. Calypso is the city’s ultimate leader of individual travel, therefore, unlike the travel agencies specialising on group travel, the company does not offer charter flights to their customers but uses services of the regular air carriers”.
      
      Source: www.kommersant.ru