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Invalid Booking
In October, roughly 20 percent of the Russians that bought hotel vouchers to Egypt’s resorts were unable to enjoy there for the lack of booked rooms. Russia’s Tourist Union addressed Egypt’s Minister of Tourism Zoheir Garana, urging him to tackle the problem. Moscow spokesman of the ministry promised to launch negotiations for paying compensation to tourists.
The problems with hotel accommodation in Egypt, which yields only to Turkey in popularity in Russia, continued all October. But the situation has become critical this week, prompting a few firms of St. Petersburg to inform the Russian Tourist Union that they are writing a letter to the Tourism Ministry of Egypt to complain of the host firms there.
The Egypt’s receiving firms tend to forfeit the booking confirmed and paid by the Russian partners and annual booking for the so-called guaranteed rooms, which have been paid in advance for several shifts of the tourists. As a result, the Russians are directed to other hotels, of lower class.
According to RF Statistics Service, 1.476 million Russians spent their vacation in Egypt, which was 29.8 percent above 2005.
Since early October, the rooms at the most popular Hurghada and Sharm el Sheikh were re-sold by 20 percent to 25 percent, according to Russia’s Tourist Union (RTU). The overbooking of this extent for Egypt has happened first time since 1999, recalled RTU’s briefer Irina Tyurina. Far back in 1999, Tyurina went on, the Tourism Ministry of Egypt released a decree about penalizing and even stripping of licenses the local firms should they violate contracts with foreign partners.
So, RTU addressed Egypt’s Minister of Tourism Zoheir Garana yesterday, calling on him to do utmost to define more exactly all current contracts and “normalize the situation in the resorts.”
There are few reasons for the hotel crisis in Egypt. One of them is the dollar depreciation to euro. The tourists from Europe tend to book three-week trips there instead of the ones that lasted for a week or two weeks.
Egypt has become more popular with the Russians as well. Besides, the Ramadan was also early this year and, in the Arab world, the demand for rooms traditionally goes up during it.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 09, 2007
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