By Vestnik Kavkaza
Yesterday, the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was released from prison to house arrest – he will be in a military hospital due to poor health. At the same time Berlin has suspended financial aid to Egypt, which it started to allocate after the overthrow of the Mubarak regime, and the UK has decided to suspend its intelligence cooperation with the security forces of Egypt and canceled the delivery of goods. As for Russia, it "attacked" the Egyptian tourism sector.
“Recommendations were issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on visiting Egypt, including for tourism purposes”, Alexander Radkov, Head of the Federal Agency for Tourism, president of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, said. “In line with these recommendations, Rostourism issued its recommendation to tour operators to suspend the sale of tours to Egypt. Those tourists who are now in Egypt should exercise the utmost care and should not leave the resort areas. Today in Egypt there are about 40,000 Russian tourists - a little more than 20,000 in Hurghada, and about the same number in Sharm el-Sheikh. Most tour operators are scaling back their programs in Egypt and suspending sales. The depth of sales was till October, but I think that, given this trend, if there are no significant events that somehow change the current trend, Russian tourists will leave the resorts by October”.
“Of course, the recommendations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and informative messages of Rostourism are an unambiguous basis for any tourist who purchased the tour package to this day in Egypt; he has the right to cancel the contract or change it accordingly, getting all the money back in full”, Izo Arakhamia, Head of the Legal Department of the Federal Agency for Tourism, said. “Tour operators who receive such applications from tourists with the consent of the tourist can redirect him to another tourist destination, for another time. If not, the tour operator is obliged to terminate the contract at the request of the tourist and return the money. If this is not done by the tour operator, the tourist is entitled to appeal to the court of their place of residence or at the location of the tour operator, travel agent, and seek his money back. But it must be borne in mind that in the case of bringing these cases to court it could still recover from the tour operator 50% of the revenue, as the absolute right is provided by law, the consumer's right to cancel the contract and get the money back. Therefore, responsible tour operators, I think, should not bring these cases to court, so as not to incur additional costs of protecting the rights of consumers, providing legal assistance, plus, as I have said, 50% of their income in the form of a fine”.
“If you look at the global practice, it usually defines several levels of risk”, Alexander Radkov added. “Conventionally, they are called for simplicity - green, yellow, orange and red. Green level is when all is quiet in the country. Yellow level is when there are restrictions on access to, say, some parts of the country. Orange is when there is a potential security threat. And red is when citizens must be evacuated. Evacuation of citizens from Egypt has not yet been announced. We hope this will not happen. Now, provisionally, we can say that in Egypt there is an orange level of security when there is a potential security threat. We have no evacuation. But, of course, we have a recommendation not to go there because the situation is very complicated. We do not know how it will develop further. We cannot exclude the possibility of civil war, and then of course, the question of evacuation might arise”.
