Thousands Of Russians Stranded Abroad After Tour Operator Fails

[cavanami]

Maybe Thailand can get some of these quality tourists

 

http://news.yahoo.com/27-000-russians-stranded-abroad-tour-operator-fails-103444624.html

 

Russia is striving to bring back nearly 16,000 tourists stranded abroad after the latest in a string of travel companies failed amid strains over the crisis in Ukraine, tourism officials said Monday.

 

 

 

With Western sanctions threatening to tip Russia's ailing economy into a recession and the value of the ruble taking a beating, the number of Russians travelling abroad has been cut by as much as half, according to industry sources.

 

The Labirint (Labyrinth) company announced Saturday it had halted operations, leaving 27,000 Russians "abroad without return tickets," the Tourhelp service of Russian foreign tour agencies said Monday.

 

Officials said that after making emergency arrangements they had been able to bring a third home, cutting the number stuck abroad to just under 16,000.

 

"We hope to have everyone home by the end of the week," the acting head of the national tourism agency Rostourism, Oleg Safonov, told journalists.

 

Labirint is the fourth Russian tour operator to go bust in the past three weeks, stranding more than 50,000 abroad, as jitters over the conflict in Ukraine have led to a slide in bookings for overseas trips.

 

"The negative political and economic situation has influenced the number of bookings" and a drop in the value of the ruble "has hit buying power" of Russians, Labirint said in a statement.

Tour firms which had reserved a large number of seats on charter flights found themselves in difficulty when demand dropped.

 

Tourism officials said Labirint had built up a debt of 1.4 billion rubles ($39 million, 29 million euros) owed to the unit of national airline Aeroflot, which carried its clients...

 

She said Russian tourists in Greece whose hotel stays had not been paid for by Labirint were being allowed to remain for the time being, but some of those in Turkey were being turned out of their rooms.

 

Turkey's Dogan news agency reported that 44 Russian tourists have been sleeping at Antalya Airport for three days because they can not afford to buy return tickets and were appealing for government help.

 

Russia's NTV channel aired a video of Russian tourists throwing furniture in the lobby and fighting with security guards after being turned out of a Turkish hotel where they had expected an all-inclusive holiday.

 

Safonov had warned earlier in the day the agency would create a blacklist of firms that mistreated Russian tourists who ended up in such situations.

 

"Unfortunately, we encounter cases where foreign partners turn out tourists and treat them very harshly... so we plan to create a list of such partners with whom it will be recommended to avoid doing business," he told the Interfax news agency.

 

He blamed a "crisis of confidence" among Russia's foreign partners who are demanding advance payments due to fears they may not get paid as aggravating the situation...

[Flashermac]