‘Intourist Travel Shop (Intourist’s 100% daughter enterprise) has nearly completed the acquisition of Yekaterinburg-based Rosstour’s 51% shareholding. Even though the transaction is not fully through yet, the principal decision has already been made and finalized, the spokeswoman for Intourist Yulia Krylova said to an UrBC reporter.

‘The purchase of Rosstour’s network will allow Intourist Travel Shop to improve on its retail sales and thus building up Intourist’s share of the Ural market,’ she explained.

Rosstour runs twenty-one own offices and four franchising-based ones at the moment.

‘We are planning on keeping Rosstour’s personnel. The re-branding process will be two-fold; it will take about one and a half years and is to begin in 2009,’ Krylova added.