During his Address to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin spoke about the development of transport and tourism in Russia. The benchmarks for the implementation of the plans were mainly set for 2030, but problems were also raised that need to be solved here and now.
For example, the President of the Russian Federation noted: “Air travel should become more affordable. It is necessary to increase the so-called aviation mobility of citizens.” The day before the announcement of the message on dynamic pricing in transport and tourism, we spoke at a meeting between the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin and the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Maxim Shaskolsky. The head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service admitted that prices for railway transport, air services, taxis, hotel business and so on are growing economically unreasonably and unjustifiably. But the service “is now using soft price regulation tools in order to find optimal solutions to curb prices in these areas. For example, we have issued a warning to one of the largest airlines about the need to develop a commercial policy that will provide for the establishment of tariffs at an economically reasonable level,” Maxim Shaskolsky said.
But airlines don’t even like “soft price regulation of tariffs at an economically reasonable level”, are they extreme? And the Russian Association of Air Transport Operators (AEVT) complains to the Federal Antimonopoly Service about an unjustified increase in airport charges in an unregulated segment (i.e., where prices are not regulated by the state), which is up to 75% of the total cost of ground handling. Fees are rising without any reasonable connection to the actual cost of each of the services. For example, airports receive excess profits from the sale of de-icing liquid (POZH). According to AEVT calculations, the margin of Domodedovo airport from the sale of fire is more than 350% of the purchase price, in Murmansk and Kaliningrad – about 200%, in Perm – more than 100%.
The Ministry of Economic Development, which, if anyone has forgotten, is now responsible for tourism, has decided to take a different path to achieve better accessibility of hotels, and proposes to legislate non-refundable rates in Russian hotels. We should immediately remind you that non–refundable tariffs have already been introduced on transport for exactly the same purpose – so that there are more cheap tickets. Now it will be the same with cheap hotels. Of course, the hotel owners support the Ministry’s initiative. If the bill is adopted, the amendments will enter into force on March 1, 2025.
The FSB explains
Official responses from the FSB have been received to the concerns of tourists with the wrong font in the machine-readable zone of a five-year passport (AN-Tourism wrote in detail about this problem in the previous issue). The NGO “Tourism Federation” was the first to receive a response: “If the FSB border agency detects a discrepancy between the basic information from the visual zone of the passport and the information contained in the machine-readable zone and other violations of the algorithm for forming the machine-readable zone at the border checkpoint, the passport may be invalidated,” the Department of Border Control of the FSB Border Service said.
We were more fortunate with a specific answer (and not, maybe, yes, maybe not, as in the first case) to the Telegram channel ranarod, which published the FSB’s responses to travel agent requests. About the incorrect font: “We inform you that the border authorities of the FSB of Russia do not consider filling in its machine-readable zone with a font other than the established machine-readable font OCR-B1 as a sign of unsuitability for further use of a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation certifying his identity outside the territory of the Russian Federation.” About another name of a renamed city or region: “Writing various variants of renamed names of settlements, regions or states, as well as specifying the name of the region (republic, territory, region, etc.) instead of writing the name of a specific city is not a sign of the presence of false information in such documents.”
As we have already written, some tourists, especially those who had to fly abroad in February-March, did not wait for explanations from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB and changed their passports with the wrong font. However, such a precaution almost went sideways for tourists from Samara – they were held for an hour and a half at passport control at the Samara Kurumoch airport – border guards were confused by the strange validity period of passports, which was less than five years. When the tourists were still allowed through, there were 20 minutes left before the end of the landing, they managed, but they were nervous. The fact is that when replacing a passport due to an error or typo, the expiration date does not change (the same one is set as it was in the old one), but the date of issue changes to the actual one. And even if the border guards had never seen passports valid for less than five years before, as in this case, they had to know about the replacement procedure.
The Uralians are the stars
AN-Tourism has not written about some airlines for months, but not about Ural Airlines. They have news every week. No sooner had we written that the Uralians decided to issue branded birth certificates in the sky to babies born on board their planes, than the news immediately came that a passenger of Ural Airlines had contractions on board an airplane flying from Yekaterinburg to Tashkent. An unplanned landing was not required, the aircraft proceeded to its destination.
But we did not wait for the news about the delivery of the birth certificate in the sky – the airline denied the fact of birth on board its liner. Contractions – yes, there were, upon arrival at Tashkent airport, the woman was met by an ambulance team at the ramp and taken to the maternity hospital.
Last week, Ural residents had to refute another piece of news – that the airline refused to fly to a Dutch citizen. After parallel investigations, both the airline and the primary source of information, the Telegram channel ranarod, came to the same conclusions – a Russian woman who planned to buy a ticket from Istanbul to Yekaterinburg for her Dutch husband incorrectly searched for information about the airline’s transportation rules and took it for up-to–date archival information from the time of the pandemic. And then the rules really applied, according to which “only citizens of these countries and the Russian Federation, as well as persons with a residence permit in them, will be allowed on flights from Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the UAE.
But the failed passengers of Ural Airlines initially presented their version of events to the Telegram channel ranarod – that the airline refused to board the flight to a Dutch citizen. Then, during the investigation, it turned out that tickets were not bought, since the support service could not confirm or deny archived information from the site during the pandemic. On the one hand, the failed passengers themselves clearly overdid it in search of information (they also sent a request to the FSB), on the other hand, calls to the support service should be recorded, AN–Tourism simply does not believe that the call center staff do not know the current rules of transportation. To be fair, Ural Airlines is not the most ideal airline anyway, but there is no need to invent anything.
Qiwi – everything
The Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) issued explanations regarding the revocation of the license from Kiwi Bank. Let’s note the issues related to tourism. Those travel agents who have money transfers for tours through the Contact money transfer and payment system (owned by the Qiwi Group), can count on compensation from the DIA. Payments are promised to begin no later than March 6, but electronic wallets are not subject to the deposit insurance law, and claims for them will be satisfied during the liquidation of Kiwi Bank as part of the 3rd stage of the register of creditors’ claims.
In March – to the overseas seas
One of the domestic travel planning services analyzed the March bookings and told which foreign seaside resorts its customers will be vacationing at the beginning of spring. Dubai turned out to be the most popular – March is considered the high season in the UAE, at this time of the year the air temperature stays around +27 °C, and the water is warmed up to +24°C. Phuket is quite popular with Russians – March ends the high season in Thailand, then the weather deteriorates, rains begin. At the beginning of spring, it is quite hot on the island, at least +30 °C, and the water in the sea is about +28 °C. Denpasar took the third place – the dry season is just beginning in Bali, and March is considered one of the hottest months on the island: during the day the temperature stays around +30 °C, the water is warmed up to +29°C. At the same time, there are not too many tourists yet, so the beginning of spring can be called a good time to travel to Bali.
Invitation to partnership – t.me/snn1964
Источник: argumenti.ru
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