German tourists in Turkey refused to share hotels with earthquake victims

On the 11th day after the earthquake, after 248 hours of confinement in her own collapsed apartment in the city of Kahramanmarash on Atabey Street, a young girl was rescued from the ruins, she is alive, she is being helped. This news is joyfully passed from mouth to mouth. But, unfortunately, in the eyes of tourists, and behind them hoteliers, it also has a downside.

– In each of our hotels, half is given to refugees, – says the manager of a private hotel chain in Antalya. “But we understand that not all survivors have yet arrived from the disaster zone. Many are still in the ruins and waiting for a miracle, like with Aleyna Olmez (a girl rescued from the ruins in Kahramanmarash – ed.), that their loved ones will be saved from the rubble. That is, after the completion of search and rescue operations, the number of refugees will increase significantly. Of course, we will accept them, we are people. But the tourists are running.

To date, according to the authorities, only Antalya has received 55,000 victims, but the victims of the elements continue to arrive on the coast by special boards and buses of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. They are also accepted by hotels in Alanya, Marmaris, Fethiye, Bodrum, Izmir and Cappadocia.

As of Thursday, 80,000 people were taken out of the disaster zone, left homeless by the elements, and this figure will grow daily until the end of rescue operations. Hoteliers are ready to accept all the survivors, but how can the hotel itself survive without tourists? The topic is unpleasant, so hotel staff try to be concise.

“Half of our hotel was being renovated,” says a Russian-speaking hotel worker in Marmaris. – The owner ordered to speed up the completion of the repair and gave that part to the refugees. This is a separate building. The victims were brought in in the evening. And early in the morning, a flurry of calls from tour operators – they say, our tourists are outraged, separate them from the victims or compensate for moral damage. Tourists themselves also come to the reception and demand to “solve the issue of refugees.”

– Or what?

– Or they will go to the private sector, and from there they will sue the travel agency, and she will sue the hotel. And then your relocants with free apartments fussed. They were not provided to refugees, but they give announcements like “we will rent for a week to those who cannot rest in a refugee camp.” It’s bad, or something, they settled a tourist from the hotel for a week, $ 500 in his pocket for a timely service …

Most often the Germans, mostly the elderly, are dissatisfied with the neighborhood. We answer them that the refugees are in a different building altogether. And they told us: “But we still see them!” Like, they came to relax, and not “soaked in the energy of other people’s suffering.”

The owner gathered everyone for a meeting and said that we cannot force every tourist to empathize, and from a formal point of view, they paid a lot of money for a week or two of a good rest – that is, carelessness and tranquility. Maybe at home their life is also not sugar, or they themselves are from a disadvantaged area. And instead of an expensive hotel, they ended up in a refugee camp.

Some foresaw this: for example, a German tour operator working with Turkey, the very next day after the tragedy, announced that its customers would abandon Turkey.

And so it happened: German citizens who have already bought tours, but have not yet begun their vacation, change them to Greece and Spain. For Russians, such an easy exchange of Turkey for Europe is not available, therefore, according to domestic tour operators, over the past week, the demand for organized tours to Turkey has fallen by 25-30%, and the volume of cancellations of applications for tours has increased by 10%.

– But only a few refuse already paid tours, – they say in the capital’s travel agency. – After all, money for already purchased tours is not returned. The travel company, for its part, did not violate anything. And if a tourist does not want to rest with the victims of the earthquake, this is his problem.

– Why don’t they just want to?

– Yes. And they are afraid of new shocks. They are predicted all over Turkey.

And everyone is listening…

– The fact is that hotels really began to be tested for seismic resistance. And those who are already in them talk about it in chats and scare others. Here, they say, they are preparing for a new earthquake here …

Hoteliers confirm this: the authorities have ordered every hotel to urgently receive an “seismic resistance certificate”, otherwise it will be closed. And for certification, the building is checked by a special commission.

– This was decided after a hotel collapsed in Adiyaman, where there were groups of guides and athletes, – says the owner of the hotel in Side. – The authorities thought that if each hotel hangs at the reception the conclusion of the commission that it will not collapse from the first push, this will calm the tourists. But it turned out the other way around: at the sight of the commission, they panic. In addition, our newspapers quote all the predictors of new earthquakes and cover the case of “killer engineers”.

The Turkish media are indeed full of forecasts of European and domestic seismologists, predicting new destructive vibrations of the earth’s crust to Istanbul, Canakkale, Izmir, Marmaris, Icmeler and Antalya and Alanya. They also describe mass arrests throughout Turkey of those who built buildings that could not withstand a seven-point earthquake.

To date, in the case of “violation of seismic safety during construction”, 163 suspects of the senior level (heads of sections and chief engineers), 8 are already in prison, 48 are under investigation, and another 77 people are wanted.

– One was twisted right in a five-star hotel in Antalya in front of tourists, – the Russian-speaking guide from Antalya is horrified. – The tourist will calculate how many hotels “on the snot” these 163 bosses managed to build, so not a foot more to Turkey! Hotels have now fallen into a trap.

Refugees cannot be driven out, and there are still so many huddled in tent camps, waiting for places in the hotel. And from the disaster zone every day they bring by buses and planes. But how can you keep a tourist, he is not obliged to receive our difficulties for his money.

Hoteliers put forward a proposal to the authorities: 10-15% of the room stock of each hotel will be given to the victims of the earthquake, if the costs are covered from the state treasury. Domestic travel agencies, when asked whether to wait for a reduction in prices for Turkey (at the height of the low season, the average cost of a tour from the Russian Federation is 130 thousand rubles for two for 3 stars), replied that they “see no reason for that.”