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On the threshold of Christmas holidays and a New Year operators of European destinations enter the high peak of tour sales for holiday dates. As a result, several Consulates already work in special regime.
Therefore, Consulates take extra measures. For example, the Austrians, starting from the 8th of November, made three windows instead of two accept documents from representatives of travel companies. Time of submitting documents have also been prolonged: from 10:30 to 13:00 (before it was from 10:45 till 12:15). Such changes, according to experts, were caused by increased travel flow on mountain skiing resorts in the winter period, which is resulted in long queues.
‘You need to come to the Austrian embassy by 7 AM, later you have very thin chances to get in’, comments Svetlana Stroganova, general director of ‘Euro-Expo.ru’. ‘There are queues in the Austrian Consulate and it is connected with a huge growth of tourist flow compared to summer’, explains Anna Yelnikova, head of the visa department ‘UTE Megapolus group’. Meanwhile, tour operators got used to such conditions of work. ‘We asked our agencies to submit tourists’ documents in advance’, says Michail Kulyishev, head of the visa department at ‘Ascent travel’. – ‘So we started receiving visas for New Year holidays back in October’.
On the contrary, Consulate of Czechia announced to a BANKO correspondent that from a New Year the period of accepting documents will be reduced by an hour (for couriers of travel firms it will be open between 9 and 11). Besides the Embassy is planning to close for New Year holidays according to new Russian rules: from the 31st of December till the 10th of January. The Czechs do not forget their catholic holidays either, so the 26th of December will be a holiday too. Olga Shchmeleva, general director of ‘Vedi tour group’ showed her anxiety by long vacations: ‘in this case we will have to process documents of all tourists before the 22nd of December, which is very inconvenient’. To speed up the process of accepting documents there were 8 additional windows opened, yet the queues did not fade. Nevertheless the Consulate insists that no one has wait longer than 30 minutes.
The visa department of the Hungarian consulate could not tell a BANKO correspondent exact dates of holiday days: it is only known that the 1st of January will be a holiday. We will remind you that the consulate does not work the last day of each month. Boris Blinov, general director of ‘Altus’ operating company believes that ‘on the threshold of New Year holidays there should not be rush jobs’. His confidence is supported by ‘good depth of sales’ on the Hungarian destination.
The French Consulate will not work from the 1st till the 3rd of January. However, according to Anton Zverev, head of the French destination of the company ‘Russian express’, ‘the embassy warned about possible increased period of processing visas’ which is at the moment between 7 and 8 days. The German Consulate will be closed between the 26th of December and the 9th of Januaru. According to unconfirmed data, from the 1st of December it is introducing the practice of accepting documents in envelopes, which means that travel forms have to check with special attention it contains all required documents.
