11/08/2019 16:06

Queuing For Paris

[IMG=21797-7622]On December 13th the French Consulate renewed the acceptance of visa applications for tours with a flight. Passports for bus tours are not accepted still. The press – release prepared by the French Consulate says that this measure has a temporary character and it was provoked by an ‘extraordinary flow of applications’ – 4,500 applications that doubles the norm for the period’. The date when visa applications for bus tours will be accepted will be announced in the coming days ‘as soon as the current applications are proceeded’. According to Maison de la France, at 6 p.m. on December 13th two possible dates were discussed, however the decision was not made. Meanwhile, Tatiana Kozlovskaya, General Director of Inters, commented as follows: ‘at present around 200 our clients did not get visas. We contacted the Bus Commission of the Russian Union of Travel Industry. After that the Maison de la France phoned us and asked about a number of passports of our clients in the Consulate. We plan to send our representative to the Consulate to be one of the first to be able to get all visas in time’. In general travel market experts assess the situation with Thus, Viktor Gordeev, Deputy General Director, Product Promotion, and Director of the European Department, observed that ‘the situation is not clear at the moment that makes its impossible to make suggestions regarding the further development of events. The same situation repeats every year – the Consulate has high workload but finally they cope and issue visas in time’. Furthermore, Svetlana Ermolaeva, Tourism Director of Erzog Travel Company, stated as follows: ‘I believe the situation will normalize as most of the applications were made in advance. At the moment we have 30 passports in the Consulate for tours with a flight on December 30th, January 2nd and 6th. The Consulate said that if documents are accepted until December 19th, visas for these dates will be issued in time’. The visa issuing period in the French Consulate is two weeks and all tour operators know about this, travel experts say. Therefore, the aim of the Consulate is to proceed the received documents for tours with flights on peak days as after December 19th visa applications will be accepted for less “problematic” days.