11/08/2019 16:53

Money in the morning – tours in the evening

[IMG=18334-3896] The majority of machinations carried out by dishonest tourist agencies, are related to tours’ last minute booking. Therefore, the oldest and so far the only way to correctly ensure your business from losses is to work with advance payments. Experts of the online-broadcast ‘How can an operator ensure his business from dishonest travel agencies’, which was held on the 15th of November on the professional travel and tourist portal www.tourdom.ru, came to this conclusion. They were talking mainly about the market of internal tours as the guest of the program was Sergey Romashkin, general director of ‘Dolphin’ firm. He named other possible cases when it was necessary to wheedle payment out of partners: ‘In excursion tours, especially with corporate clients, the announced number of tourist often does not coincide with the real number in the group which is usually larger than expected’, says Mr. Romashkin. ‘Or an agent books the tour a week in advance and the client has a trip for two weeks: in a week the hotel administration discovers unpaid tourist but they would not move them out’. Fortunately, they are not that many dishonest agents on the market – less than 1%. Besides there is a number of signs that can tell you the ‘group of risk’. ‘The firm’s senior management is never in the office, managers who sell tours cannot take independent decisions’ – names Sergey Romashkin, ‘If it is necessary to pay the bill via a bank, the payment usually does not come through, because of the wrong bank details. Warranty letters are faxed far too often which intimidates’. According to experts, what should also put managers of operating companies on the alert are constant accidents: car accidents, fires in the office, unexpected illnesses. You can read more about the online-broadcast and participate in the discussion here.