One of the oldest Russian tour operators, founded in 1991, Lanta-Tour Voyage, has recently announced business cessation. About 100 people using its service couldn’t fly from Moscow airports, and more than 3 000 tourists were abroad at that moment. The reason for the business cessation of the company was the refusal of one of the main creditors, Master-Bank, to give a 30-million-ruble loan. Later VTB gave a loan of $7 million to the company for repaying debts to hotels and for tourists to come home.
The head of the Federal Tourism Agency, Alexander Radkov, said that even though the company didn’t get a small loan, its debts to foreign partners only account for $7 million. “In Russia the company owes much more to its counteragents, tourists and air companies. The problem is that the company has been working at a loss for a long time, which led to its bankruptcy. The state shouldn’t predict the bankruptcy of certain economic structures, and VTB wouldn’t give credits to every bankrupted tourist operator. That is why special mechanisms for protection of tourists should be developed.”
The situation with Lanta-Tour Voyage demonstrates the imperfection of not only Russian, but also international laws. There were terrible cases of violations of tourist rights in hotels of Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Czech Republic and Italy. “Serious steps, aimed at structural changing of the Russian tourist market, should be made,” Radkov says. “We cannot protect the market from bankruptcy, as tourism is very sensitive to political, natural and other changes. However, mechanisms for protection of tourists' rights should exist.”
The Russian Tourism emergency telephone line began operating after these events. From January 28th to February 13th almost 7,000 calls were received from tourists abroad and who couldn’t fly from Moscow. Calls were devoted both to crisis situations and juridical aspects.
2600 requests from Lanta-Tour Voyage were received by Ingosstrakh. The general sum of them is 90 million rubles. The total number of victims and the amount of damage are on hold. It is obvious the sum will surpass 100 million rubles.
First of all, the laws should be reformed. The amount of financial responsibility should be connected with turnover, as the highest level – 100 million rubles – is not enough for compensation sometimes. However, the mechanism of financial responsibility of tourist operators has justified itself. This is not the first case of bankruptcy, but in all cases, except for Capital-Tour, the damage was completely compensated.
Moreover, self-managing organizations should be established. In some crisis situations like bankruptcy, natural disasters and so on, there are two main targets. The first is paying compensation to people who have got a tourist operator’s service; second is returning people from abroad. Compensation funds should be used for it, so tourists could come back home as soon as possible.
