MOSCOW, November 10. Russian tour operators have by Thursday, November 12, to calculate the costs they will incur in connection with the suspension of flights to Egypt to assess the scale and format of state support of the industry. The decision was taken on Monday at a meeting in the Federal Agency reported Tuesday on the website of the Association of tour operators of Russia (ATOR).
“Operators must before 12 November to review the level of cancelled, rebooked and “postponed” tours, and, consequently, to estimate their costs. The only problem is the timing of data delivery. In order to assess the amount of costs, for example, canceled tours (cost of returns) required stats, even for a few days quite difficult to collect. Information from operators is updated daily and will probably have to apply a method of statistical sampling when data is evaluated for some representative group”, – stated in the message.
Earlier it was reported that ATOR has written to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich the letter in which he asks the government to consider providing state guarantees to tour operators due to the suspension of flights to Egypt.
In addition, tour operators are asking the government for assistance in addressing issues with carriers. One of the major issues is the ability to transfer already paid for flights for a later date without penalties from the airlines.
In ATOR also consider it appropriate to release the Russian carriers carrying out the planned evacuation of Russian citizens from airport and other charges.
Preliminary assessment tour of the community if the ban on flights to Egypt will last more than 2-3 months, damage to the tourism business may be about $200 million.
