ATHENS: Greece and Spain along with a comeback for Turkey, and plans to re-invest last year’s higher profits in further hotel expansion, fvw.com reports. The Düsseldorf-based group increased pre-tax profits by 12.7% to nearly €63 million in the year ending October 2017. The tour operator businesses increased turnover by 4.5% to nearly €1.4 billion while customer numbers rose by 2.5% to 1.66 million from the four source markets Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. All of the group’s businesses improved their profits and the Allsun Hotels chain was once again “highly profitable”.Owner Willi Verhuven noted: “Like in past years, the profits will remain completely inside the company, will flow into the reserves and will be mostly used for investments.” The group plans to continue investing mostly in its hotel chain Allsun, which now operates 34 hotels, and ‘digital transformation’ of the group’s business activities.For the current year, Alltours aims to raise tour operator revenues by 5% and customer numbers by 3%. “The current winter season is exceeding all expectations and bookings for the coming season are also well ahead of planning,” the company stated. In terms of destinations, demand is strong for Spain, where the group expects more than one million holidaymakers for the first time. The company has chartered 20,000 extra seats on flights from Germany to Majorca with various carriers in February and March to make up for the gap left by Niki’s insolvency and grounding.Alltours again forecasts the strongest growth this year for Greece, which already generated 30% increases in turnover and customer numbers last summer and became the company’s second-largest destination. Next summer, the first 2 hotels of Alltours hotel chain, Allsun, are expected to open in Crete. Allsun operates a total of 34 hotels, 26 of which in Spain and 6 in Majorca. All of them are offered exclusively by the group’s tour operators.
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