Let us remind you that the ban on flights to 11 southern airports has been officially extended until May 19. We are talking about the airports of Simferopol, Anapa and Gelendzhik. But at the same time, airlines are canceling flights until the end of June: S7 closed sales until June 23, Ural Airlines until June 30. At the same time, “private” tourists who have already bought tickets receive mailings about the cancellation of even September flights.
As a result, as the travel market experts told ATOR, due to the closed airports, the booking volumes of the Black Sea resorts are now lower than expected: depending on the destination, a decrease in sales from 10 to 80% is recorded. Moreover, the depth of sales in most southern directions does not exceed the end of June. So the experts of the tour operator “Dolphin” noted the following distribution of the Black Sea resorts: 40% of bookings already made are arrivals in May, 30% – arrivals in June, 12% – in July, the remaining 18% are applications for August and until the end of the season. Intourist noted that relatively good sales in June show premium hotels 4 and 5 *. All other placement segments are stagnating. At the same time, there are no cancellations – frightened tourists canceled tours immediately after the airports were closed, but now domestic tourism is on standby.
Demand is falling, including for open resorts – for example, according to Sergey Romashkin, CEO of the Dolphin tour operator, the demand for tours in Greater Sochi in May 2022 decreased by 10% compared to last year. The reason is the increase in the cost of air tickets to the last open resort airport by about 30%, the increase in flight time, but first of all, the fact that tourists tend to save more. “Some tourists have given up their trips to Sochi in May in favor of their summer vacation, for which they save money,” Sergei Romashkin said.
Other resorts where airports are closed have been hit even harder. On average, tour operators record up to 25-30% reduction in bookings for Anapa, up to 40% for Gelendzhik and Tuapse. Tourists really appreciate direct flights, which are now closed. As a result, hotels have a lot of offers at a reduced price – but so far this does not help much. The Crimean resorts lost the most in terms of volume, where demand fell from 40-45% to 80-85%. At the same time, according to tour operators, support from autotourists from neighboring regions is unlikely here – tourists are both afraid and do not want to spend extra time on the road.
“In Anapa, where we are now seeing a 25% decline in demand, there is a choice of good 4-5* hotels and their capabilities are known to residents of neighboring regions. So there will be no big problems with loading Anapa hotels during the season. But Crimea, which has already lost 40-45% of its volume, can hardly count on the help of local tourists – from the nearest southern territories of Russia it will take 6-7 hours to get to Crimea by car. When there is a choice, for example, for residents of Krasnodar to go to Anapa or Crimea, then such tourists are more likely to choose Anapa,” Sergey Romashkin estimated.
As a result, due to the small number of tourists and the low depth of booking, hotels in the Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory reduce prices for accommodation. The general director of Dolphin noted that some Crimean hotels have already reduced prices by an average of 5% compared to last year. There is also a more impressive reduction: the Mriya Hotel sent a STR for accommodation until the end of May with a discount of up to 30%. According to his estimates, prices on the Black Sea coast will continue to decline, especially in the segment of 2-3 * hotels, since the objects of these categories will experience underutilization.
Intourist and Multitour reported that now discounts from 10 to 30% for arrivals in May and June are provided by hotels of the middle price segment of the category 3 and 4 *, with the exception of objects in Sochi. Also, discounts up to 15% have already begun to send hotels Abkhazia.
We add that the TURPROM editors recommend choosing a tour to Russian or foreign resorts from any major Russian tour operator at guaranteed best prices in one of the well-known online package tour aggregators: ✈ here is a direct link to Level.Travel and here ✈ is a direct link to Travelata. These online agencies aggregate absolutely all tours of all Russian tour operators, which allows tourists to conveniently compare them and choose the best tour packages. The selected tour can be booked immediately, receive instant confirmation and pay online through a secure banking gateway and receive documents. Or you can just look at and compare the current prices for tours from all tour operators at once.
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