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Maya Lomidze, executive director of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia
This year was to some extent at a record level,
because there were a lot of cases with varying degrees of resonance,
and, of course, they could not help influencing the dynamics of the flow.
I must say that only one more or less large bankruptcy or closure of the company,
tourism agency or operator is enough so that sales decrease the next week,
according to various estimates, by between 10 and 30%.
These factors, of course, have a very serious rather negative impact on booking.
What package holidays were in greatest demand in 2012?
The average duration was from 8 to 14 days.
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.
I want to draw your attention that Turkey is not affected:
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.
So there were almost no "last minute" holidays to Turkey.
What cost of holidays was the most popular one?
These are tours 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.