Georgia is laid out according to tour packages – Kommersant
[ad_1]
A full-fledged return of Georgia to the tourism market has activated the tourism industry and travelers. Tour operators have already begun to form organized programs in the country, hoping to offer trips with direct flights in the near future. The potential demand of Russians for holidays in Georgia has also grown. However, the matter has not yet reached real sales of tours: tourists are waiting for the appearance of more profitable offers. Experts also believe that it will be difficult for tour operators to meet the growing demand due to the limited volume of air travel.
Tour operators have begun offering travelers organized tours to Georgia, Dmitry Gorin, vice president of the Russian Union of Travel Industry, told Kommersant. Now programs can be formed on the basis of connecting flights, and from May 19, there will probably be offers that include direct flights, he explains. Fun & Sun told Kommersant that the excursion programs have already been added to the company’s website, and proposals for tour packages will appear in the near future.
The general director of the Dolphin tour operator Sergey Romashkin expects proposals for tour packages to appear by the end of the week. While the company is expanding its base of hotels in Georgia, their number has grown from five to 18 in the last week, he says. The Russian Express offers ground handling services based on connecting flights as well.
The moratorium on flights to Georgia, which had been in effect since the summer of 2019, along with a recommendation to tour operators not to sell organized tours there, was canceled on May 10, and on May 15, it became known about Azimut’s intention to launch flights to the country with Russian-made aircraft from May 19. Authorization has been obtained for seven flights a week. The carrier Georgian Airways agreed on a similar frequency from May 20, and ticket sales on the company’s website began on the evening of May 16.
Dmitry Gorin doubts that tour operators will buy blocks of seats on Azimuth flights, paying attention to the small capacity of the vessels (flights will be operated by SSJ). At the same time, the head of the board of directors of Azimut, Pavel Udod, told Kommersant that “partnership with tour operators is quite possible,” but so far no requests have been received. Georgian Airways did not promptly respond to Kommersant. Meanwhile, not all tour operators are ready to plan a program on the flights of Azimuth and the Georgian carrier. Biblio Globus says they are not ready to increase their presence in the direction until Aeroflot starts flights. Sergei Romashkin believes that the average cost of excursion tours to Georgia for four days on the basis of direct flights will be 50-55 thousand rubles, of which 30 thousand rubles. – transportation. But while airfare is more expensive.
According to OneTwoTrip, the average price of a one-way flight to Georgia on May 10-15 was 22,000 rubles. According to Yandex.Travel estimates, on the same dates a round-trip ticket cost an average of 53 thousand rubles. Tourists consider such airfare to be high, says Intourist representative Daria Domostroyeva.
The interest of Russians in Georgia is quite large. The representative of OnlineTur.ru Igor Blinov noticed a multiple increase in the number of calls from tourists. OneTwoTrip notes that on May 10-15, Georgia became the fourth most popular foreign destination in terms of the number of ticket searches. Yandex.Travel notes that the potential demand for flights to Georgia has increased sevenfold. But the number of bookings is still small, the company says.
Ostrovok.ru says that the number of hotel bookings in Georgia in the period May 10-15 was 25% higher than the previous six days and eight times the value for the same period last year. The average cost of a night for the year decreased by 3%, to 5.6 thousand rubles. The depth of hotel bookings in Georgia has increased by 2.5 times, from 20 to 48 days, Yandex.Travel adds.
Demand for trips to post-Soviet countries has been growing noticeably in recent years, but Georgia did not fall into this wave due to the lack of direct flights, Sletat.ru notes. Now the country can be considered for a summer holiday. However, Dmitry Gorin believes that the carrying capacity will be limited and, at least at first, direct flights will be in high demand among Russians who have “family and other ties with Georgia” (the country became one of the main relocation destinations after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine and mobilization announcements). Sergey Romashkin notes the wrong moment for launching programs: “half of the tourists have already planned their summer holidays.”
[ad_2]
Source link
