Author: VK
The number of Russian tourists who will spend the New Year holidays abroad increased by approximately 10%. According to Maya Lomidze, executive director of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, on New Year's Eve tours traditionally become twice more expensive. Affordable opportunities to spend holidays on New Year's Eve this year include resorts in Egypt and Thailand. In other areas the tour price starts from 2.5 thousand euro. The most popular countries on New Year's Eve among Russians, according to ATOR, are Egypt, Thailand, UAE, India, the Caribbean countries, Spain and the Czech Republic. Among the ski areas there are Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland.
According to Lomidze, package holidays of an average duration from 8 to 14 days were in greatest demand in 2012. “But there is another interesting trend we have not seen in previous years. These are holidays lasting more than three weeks. And, oddly enough, according to our analysts, there is such country as Egypt here. People seem to have sent their families there because for three weeks, of course, working people cannot go travelling. There are Egypt and Bulgaria - Bulgaria in summer, and Egypt throughout the year, allowing to this country to come first in this segment. The average depth of sales in 2012 is two weeks. Clearly, this is what is called the "average temperature in the hospital" - a very average picture, because, for example, Christmas holidays start being reserved in August. The same is true for the holidays in June which were booked in April or in March, too, not two weeks before. But due to the fact that there were many negative events affecting the demand, in particular the events in Israel, the continuing political tensions in Egypt, and some other countries have also fallen under the influence of objective factors, and this greatly reduced the depth of the reservation, which has led to the average depth of sales amounting to two weeks. Percentage of booking tours «last minute» is very low, according to our analysts, and, in principle, it affected only the visa-free countries like Egypt and Thailand”. ATOR has also declared that Turkey is not affected by this type of booking: Turkey as a summer mass direction was booked in advance, as people feared that those holidays and programs that tourists would like to choose would just run out.
Lomidze says that the most popular tours were ones worth between $ 1,000 and $ 2,000 for the holiday. These numbers do not correlate, for example, with the data of different centers of polls where respondents say that they are willing to spend between $ 500 to $ 1,000 per holiday. “Maybe they are ready, but the real cost of holiday is above this and the real cost of people is higher than what they declare. We can also say that, compared to last year, price range of actual sales in the tourism business has increased, that is, people buy more expensive holiday than it was last year. Let me remind you that last year, the most popular holidays cost from $600 to $1200 dollars”.
