By Vestnik Kavkaza
One of the oldest and the leading Russian holiday operators in the sphere of internal tourism, Raena Company, has gone bankrupt. The whole staff of the company, including the Director General, lost their jobs, but 90% of booked summer holidays were paid for by the company, that is why tourists will be able to go to resorts. They say no more than a few dozens of people will suffer.
However, not all companies experience such a calm bankruptcy. The association “Tourpomoshch” (tourist support) was established for helping tourists. The head of the law department of Rostourism, Izo Arakhamia, stated that “in case of any emergencies – non-checking-in, non-payment for a room, tourists’ flights, who are already abroad – such tourists will receive immediate help. They will come back to Russia for money of the compensational fund which was established by holiday operators in the sphere of international tourism. Those who didn’t leave Russia for some reasons can address to an insurance company.”
Arakhamia states that such troubles are usually caused by non-creditability or bankrupting of a holiday operator. “This union requires participation of all holidays operation in the sphere of international tourism, which are registered in the Unified Federal List of Holiday Operators. There are about two thousand of them. At the moment about 1700 joined the union. We speak only about cases when a holiday operator failed to pay for accommodation to a hotel or for a ticket to an airline. I.e. it sends a tourist abroad and there a tourist faces the fact that nothing is prepaid. Hotels and return tickets – only in these cases tourists will receive help. An operator is unavailable already, it declares bankruptcy and posts information on its site about this.”
The Russian government adopted an act which requires that agencies and operators are obliged to place information on “Tourpomoshch” in all contracts with tourists. It is an obliged condition for a contract. “If an operator doesn’t belong to the union, this information won’t be printed in a contract. But if the information is printed, but the operator is not a member of the union, there will be very heavy sanctions for it.”
