11/08/2019 16:46

Thailand - minus, Egypt - plus

[IMG=18639-4215] A curious situation occurred on Yekaterinburg market with selling New Year's holiday. As a BANKO correspondent discovered, after taking a series of interviews from the representatives of local tour firms, in the first decade of December charter programs were changed: one of flights to Thailand was cancelled, yet on the Egyptian destination operators announced two additional January flights. Natalia Oborina, director of ‘Orange-tour’ company, consolidator of additional flight to Hurghada, explains the situation of redistribution of demand between Thailand and Egypt: ‘This year Egypt is topping the sales, while last year Thailand was leading’. Indeed, in the beginning of December the dynamics of sales forced ‘More travel’, ‘Tex tour’ and ‘World fund’ abandon the flight of ‘Ural airlines’ to Utapao on the 25th of December. Yet specialists believe it is not caused by the low demand for Thailand but by an unfortunate date. ‘The main demand is for dates closed to the New Year starting from the 27th of December’, explains Aleksander Chirkov, director of ‘Intourline’ company. According to him, tickets for the weekly direct charter of ‘Transaero’ on the 27th of December were sold long ago. The same situation is with the regular weekly flight to ‘Uzbek airlines’: everything is bought for the 29th of December. This information was confirmed by Olga Svechkova, vice-president of ‘World fund’ company, she added that a chance to change the Thai flight of ‘Ural airlines’ for later and more popular dates occurred too late. According to her, by that moment consolidators already were worried whether they will manage to justify the financial risks for the short period of time: ‘It was possible to send the available Il-86 to Thailand but there was a concern that it will not be filled in such a short period until the New Year’, said ms. Svechkova. In the end, the favour was given to Egypt: the segment of tour sales to the county is much wider because of low prices and, therefore, smaller amount of risks. In total, experts believe there will be 9 charter flights from Yekaterinburg to Egypt from the 25th of December till the 10th of January. With Thailand resort the situation differ – 5 charters, plus there will be 2 regular flights of ‘Uzbek airlines’ in the same period of time.