11/08/2019 16:50

To Egypt for peanuts

[IMG=18458-4053] At the end of November Moscow operators of Egypt destination brought to the market record low prices for travel packages. To compare, by the 20th of November special offers on weekly tours with accommodation in hotels of Sharm-El-Sheikh 3* and flights on the 26th of November cost $300–350 (for one person, DBL). However in the middle of last week many operators lowered the price to $200. On the 29th of November tours to Hurghada were $158. ‘Periodic damping is noted on certain dates 2-3 days before the flights. It has been like that since the 12th of November,’ notes Maria Badalova, deputy general director of ‘Coral Travel’ company. All this is happening in spite of the fact that the volumes of flights for the second half of November when the low demand is expected were reduced by 25-30% (see news as of 23.11). ‘Taken measures did not solve the problem of abundance of flights: for the last flights there were more free seats than occupied’, said Denis Timofeev, head of the ‘Golden century’ company. As a BANKO correspondent discovered, the reason is in the fact that the seasonably drop of demand this year was much stronger than it was expected by the market participants. ‘Therefore we could not react quickly enough and cut down the flights even more’, says Svetlana Golubnichnaya, head of the department of Egypt in ‘ICS Travel group’. According to some evaluations, the situation which occurred these days on the market can lat up till the 20th of December’.