This year, it looks like Romanians are showing great interest when it comes to traveling, the transport industry collecting an estimated 2 billion Euro on the profile market in the first half of the current year. In this context, it might be interesting to see who’s making the rules on the Romanian transport market.
Romanians call on different companies that offer transport solutions for both national and international rides. The options are varied, but statistics show that, at least for 2014, the market leader has been Atlassib, the company from Sibiu that offers transport by bus. The main clients are Romanians living abroad who work in Spain, Italy or Germany. For the previous year, Atlassib has has a business figure of 260 million lei, an increase from 2012, and has transported around 600.000 persons. This year, estimations show that sales have increased by about 8%.
According to Ziarul Financiar, the General Manager of Atlassib, Daniel Mincu, has explained the slight increase in ticket prices by the fact that they now have to compete with low-cost airline companies. The Romanian airline market is dominated by prominent players, such as Blue Air, Wizz Air, KLM, Lufthansa and of course, Tarom (who, according to the semestrial report that has been published recently, has registered an increase by 7% from last year and has transported around 1 million passengers. For 2013, the airline industry got 1.2 billion lei (over 270 million Euro).
Contrary to expectations, railway transport has also registered an increase. CFR has noticed an elevated number of passengers (24.5% more people than during the first semester of last year). Nevertheless, the national railway company is struggling to stay afloat, facing tremendous competition from private operators Regiotrans and Transferoviar Calatori, who offer more attractive services.
Another individual road transport option is the rent a car solution, as more and more people turn to car hire companies, as well as to the new airport transfer option.