The resort fee introduced in 2018 in the regions of mass tourism, according to a change in legislation, from 2025 all regions of Russia without exception will be able to introduce.
Of course, the tax had to be renamed, and now it will be called a tourist tax. Whether or not to introduce a new fee is up to the local authorities, they also have the right to set the amount of payment from accommodation facilities (the resort fee is charged to tourists). The federal law sets the maximum rate of the cost of accommodation services – in 2025 it will be 1% and every year it will increase by one percentage point until 2029, later than 2029 – no higher than 5%. The collected funds will be “colored” – municipalities will be able to spend them exclusively on the design, construction, reconstruction and maintenance of tourist infrastructure.
AN-Tourism has already talked about plans to introduce a new tax in Suzdal, Sortavala, Vologda and Pskov – it is logical in principle that the local authorities of traditional tourist destinations seized the opportunity to replenish the budget. But in the regions, to put it mildly, not quite tourist, everything is not so clear.
“Arkhangelsk is hardly a touristically attractive city. Are we imposing an unnecessary burden on a responsible business that operates legally, unlike landlords? After all, people who rent apartments to visitors will not pay tax. Let’s assume that a family of five comes to Arkhangelsk for 10 days. They will be required to pay at least 500 rubles per day. In total, you will get 5 thousand rubles for this time of stay. This is an unaffordable amount for many Russian families,” Deputy Maria Kharchenko said at a discussion of the tourist tax in the City Duma. As a result, they decided to introduce a tax, and starting from the new year, guests of Arkhangelsk staying in hotels will be required to pay a tax of no more than 1% of the cost of living per day, but not less than 100 rubles. And representatives of the city administration informed the deputies that the authorities of Kargopol are going to introduce a similar tax.
The Council of Deputies of Novosibirsk has decided to introduce a tourist tax in the city. Residents of the Novosibirsk region are exempt from paying the tax; persons who have three or more dependent children; persons whose children aged 18-23 are studying full-time; family members of the participants of their education. It should be noted that by the end of 2023, the Novosibirsk Region became a leader in the Siberian Federal District and entered the top 10 in Russia in terms of tourist traffic. More than half of the tourists coming to the Novosibirsk region are residents of neighboring regions.
But in the Sverdlovsk region, they abandoned the idea of introducing a tourist tax after the Ural Tourism Association (UAT) sharply opposed the new tax. In its letter addressed to the deputy governor of the region Dmitry Ionin, the association stressed that the introduction of a tourist tax in the Sverdlovsk region is premature, the usefulness of this measure for the development of tourism in the region seems problematic and unproven, and therefore it is not recommended to introduce a tourist tax in the Sverdlovsk region in the coming years. As noted in the letter, tourist taxes are usually imposed when a particular destination is overloaded. According to the UAT, this does not apply to Yekaterinburg. Also, with the introduction of a tourist tax in the Sverdlovsk region, business tourism will decrease, since companies will prefer remote resolution of issues to additional expenses.
The UAT proposal was supported by the Department for the Development of Tourism and the Hospitality Industry of the region and the relevant committee of the Legislative Assembly. Deputy Governor Dmitry Ionin summed up the result: “It is premature to talk about the tourist tax. The mechanism is new, and the practice of its application is not yet clear, even on the example of mass tourism regions.”
Looking at the success of the Ural colleagues, hoteliers of the Rostov region also asked the authorities not to introduce a tourist tax in the region, as the innovation will have a negative impact on the tourism industry. “At the cost of a double room in the amount of 3.5 thousand rubles, guests will have to pay a total of 200 rubles of tourist tax, which will amount to more than 5% of the price per room per day. It turns out that the more budget–friendly the hotel, the higher the percentage of the tourist tax on gross revenue will be,” explained Elena Papizh, President of the Association of Hospitality Industry Professionals. The authorities of the Rostov region and the city of Taganrog announced plans to introduce a tourist tax in the summer.
The deputies of the Novgorod City Duma approached the tourist tax the most creatively, who held their meeting on Friday, September 27, World Tourism Day, to approve the introduction of a tourist tax in the region. In 2025, the tax rate in Veliky Novgorod will be 1% of the tax base, at least 100 rubles per day.
An unexpected twist
AN-Tourism rarely reports meager fines to airlines for overbooking – usually it is 30 thousand rubles, which is a pellet for an elephant, so we did not focus on such news. But the news from Yekaterinburg can create a good precedent: the Ural Transport Prosecutor’s Office opened an administrative offense case against Ural Airlines due to the fact of overbooking. But instead of the article “Provision of services to the public that do not meet the requirements of regulatory legal acts” (where the fine is the same 30 thousand rubles), the case was initiated under the article “Consumer fraud”. And according to it, a legal entity may face a fine from 100 to 500 thousand rubles.
Did it resolve itself?
The Russian Foreign Ministry reported on the solution of the problem with flights to Mexico via Turkey. “We have done everything possible so that Russian tourists can safely fly to Mexico and other Latin American countries. At least we have no signals that there are any problems at the transfer airport in Turkey right now,” said Alexander Shchetinin, director of the Latin American Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Recall that since March of this year, the Turkish airline Turkish Airlines has been filming en masse (and AN-Tourism wrote about this in detail) Russians from flights to Latin America. The airline also prohibited agents from issuing one-way tickets only for flights from Istanbul to Mexico City, Cancun, Bogota, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires. The Turkish airline also stopped the sale of single tickets from Russia to Mexico. There is still a warning on the Turkish Airlines website about special boarding rules for flights to Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Cuba and Brazil.
So the “solution to the problem” is most likely due to the fact that Russians simply began to choose other routes for transit to Mexico. For example, ATOR (Association of Tour Operators of Russia) claims that now tour operators take their customers to Latin America by other routes: either Ethiopian Airlines via Addis Ababa, or Emirates via Dubai, or Aeroflot to Havana, then by local airlines. And those who do fly Turkish Airlines may still be affected. For example, the day before Alexander Shchetinin declared that “the problems have been solved,” the media reported how a Russian citizen flew on a connecting flight of a Turkish airline from Montenegro to Panama on September 22 and was refused boarding on the second segment in transit in Istanbul. “No waiver paper was provided, and a group of “lucky people” like me and I walked back and forth from the gate to the airline counter and listened to ridiculous excuses. As a result, I lost a whole day at the airport, 3 thousand euros for tickets and more luggage!” – the would-be passenger wrote on his social networks. After the story was replicated by the media, a sequel followed – Turkish Airlines notified the Russian that he was now banned from flying on its flights to Latin America for one year. “Your entry into the countries has not been approved by the authorities of these countries,” the notification said.
“Russian diplomats report on the “solution of the issue”, but it will be possible to confirm this in practice only when through tariffs from Russia to Latin American countries appear again in the Turkish Airlines system. So far there are no such tariffs, and tourists can check the availability of trips on the route through Istanbul only at their discretion and at their own risk,” said ATOR Vice President Artur Muradyan.
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Источник: argumenti.ru
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