International aircraft charter broker Le Bas International has joined forces with Saudi Arabian travel company Premier Private Travel Services to capture a "substantial share of the private travel market in the Middle East". The partnership with the Riyadh-based company gives Shannon Ireland-based Le Bas a foothold in the region for the first time and boosts the company's strategy to gain 5% of the worldwide air charter market - estimated at around $40 billion, by 2012.
"Premier will be prospecting and cultivating a new elite client base of high net-worth individuals, royalty, heads of state and corporations based in Saudi Arabia, while Le Bas will be the engine behind each request, arranging flights and details for each trip," says Le Bas International founder and chief executive Peter Le Bas. A similar deal has also been struck with Emirates Travel in Dubai, Le Bas says. "The Middle East is a huge market and continuing to grow at a rapid pace," he adds. "Both Premier and Emirates will be our shop front in the region helping to build a client base and our brand."
Le Bas, which also has an operations base in California, is hoping to launch the company on the New York stock exchange in 2010. "We can then accelerate our growth through acquisitions of other companies" - notably other brokers - and "we also plan to build a dedicated aircraft leasing division."
Le Bas is hoping to establish sales agents in China, in Beijing and Shanghai, by the end of 2009 and will then focus on the "booming Australian market".
He says: "We plan to be a $400 million company [annual turnover] in 2010 and a $2 billion company in 2012."
Source: Flight International
