The authorities of the Krasnodar Territory and Crimea are beginning to sum up the intermediate results of the tourist season, which is taking place in the regime of a flight ban to the south of Russia. According to official data, the occupancy of the Crimean resorts is approximately 50%, and the season seems to be a failure.
The road to the south – instead of three hours, three days
The Russians are not satisfied with the fact that they will have to spend an average of two or three days from a vacation of 10-14 days on the road to Crimea by train or by car, instead of 2-5 hours by plane earlier. Meanwhile, people go on vacation, tour operators sell only accommodation, so you have to choose the transport yourself.
The most difficult thing for tourists to get to the beaches of the Crimea – even from Moscow, the bus takes about 30 hours or more, trains – from two days. Some try to get transfers from Krasnodar and Rostov in the face of a shortage of train tickets, but this is also quite long and tiring. People have been complaining for more than one month that there are no tickets, so you can hardly go south by train.
Driving a car means expensive fuel, bad roads, serpentine, stable summer traffic jams, busy and toll roads, problems with parking, constant worry about the car, attachment to it, well, just an additional burden for the driver on the road when you don’t really have a rest. However, many still prefer car travel.
People are afraid to go to Crimea
Anatoly Spirin, the author of the Telegram channel “SOMETHING LIKE SO,” draws attention to the fact that now the tourism industry is not in the foreground among officials. The main problem – the lack of air communication could not be corrected even after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Many Russians are simply afraid to go to Crimea. People are frightened by threats about a possible missile attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and, most importantly, they are afraid of an attack on the Crimean bridge – in fact, the only transport artery connecting with the mainland. Indeed, in such a situation, hundreds of thousands of people will instantly find themselves locked in the Crimean territory.
Spirin is confident that it will soon become clear to everyone that in the tourism sector everything is much worse than it is now presented by officials, especially against the background of Sochi, which is crowded, but other tourist cities are empty, in which business is now complaining about the lack of tourists.
Shock price
In addition to an uncomfortable road to rest, prices in resort towns have become an unpleasant surprise for vacationers. According to experts, our tourists do not really like the south of Russia as a holiday destination, because they looked at the prices and quality of holidays in Turkey and Egypt, where there is a completely different level of service.
Ilya Karpovich, an expert of the “Subtleties of Tourism” portal, noted that Russian tourists, who traditionally vacation on the coast of the Krasnodar Territory and Crimea, unanimously state that prices for most services this year are greatly inflated. So, the cost of one sunbed on the beaches of Adler is about 700 rubles, and in some places even higher.
“I thought I would rest like a human being, but I ended up in a real hell on earth. Crowds of people in the market, on the beach, on the streets, in restaurants, everything is unreasonably expensive, rudeness at every step, no service, tasteless food and crappy wine. You won’t get there normally on excursions, as there are traffic jams all around. It would be better if I sat in the country, ”a tourist from Nizhny Novgorod, who is vacationing in Sochi, wrote about what was happening on social networks.
Prices in cafes and restaurants have made a cosmic leap. However, the quality of the food has not improved. The number of hotels and hostels has grown, but despite the competition, room rent has not decreased, and often has grown.
Spoiled vacation
This year, due to the large influx of tourists on the Black Sea coast of the Krasnodar Territory, vacationers began to suffer en masse from intestinal infections ahead of time. E. coli in the summer season becomes a real epidemic. Usually, by the beginning of August, all local hospitals that are not designed for a large number of patients are overwhelmed, and people with a temperature under 40 and severe vomiting are offered to be treated on their own.
“My children of four and seven years old and I arrived in Lazarevskoye at the end of June, for this time there were already a lot of people,” says Natalia from St. Petersburg. – Two days later, the girls began to feel sick, they had a fever. It doesn’t look like food poisoning, we live in a good hotel and I’m fine. But I tried to swim with my mouth closed, but children can’t do that, probably the problem is again in sea water. We can’t go to the sea now, all that remains is to swim in the pool.
The Sochi authorities have been promising for many years to solve the problem of draining sewage into the sea, to build some kind of treatment facilities, but every year it only gets worse and worse. At the same time, they do not forget to raise prices for everything every year – we paid 25% more for the hotel than last year.”
Attraction of unheard of generosity
The Russian authorities say that the rest of the Crimea is safe and wonderful. As part of the program “We are together. Tourism” from the Federal Tourism Agency and the national project “Tourism and Hospitality Industry” offers all kinds of discounts and special offers.
For example, a discount on accommodation up to 35% for residents of the Southern Federal District and auto travelers. Early “promotional” booking continues to operate – for August and September. As a bonus, there are free transfers from the place of arrival to the hotel, promotions for early check-in and late check-out, additional days and excursions as a gift, accommodation for the price of meals, etc.
Resort complexes lure guests with additional wellness programs. They began to offer car tourists cashback for kilometers – an unprecedented return of part of the money spent on the road. In addition, management companies offer discounts along the way in the hotels of their network, up to free accommodation.
Sad result
According to Ilya Umansky, the head of the commission of the Russian Union of the Travel Industry on domestic tourism and the general director of the Alien tour operator, the occupancy rate of hotels in Anapa fell by 31%, in Tuapse – by 12%, in Gelendzhik – by 8%.
According to the most optimistic estimates, the flow of tourists to Crimea fell by 40% when compared with the same period last year. Such figures are forced to confirm the head of the Republic of Crimea Sergei Aksenov. According to him, one of the leading resort regions of the country is experiencing an unprecedented shortage of tourists, which, even according to official statistics, are almost two times less than usual.
