Turkish Companies Are Taking Russian Tourists Under Control

19.06.2009 — News

The crisis will cause a shift in the Russian tourist market, whilst big foreign players will gain a considerable advantage. The opinion of experts interviewed by RusBusinessNews is that this trend is quite strong in the Urals and in Siberia where companies with Turkish capital, such as Anex Tour, Tez Tour, Pegas Touristik, Coral Travel, and Sunrise Tour compete for the most popular travel destinations.

Two years ago Turkish companies took control over the tourists travelling to India (Goa) and Thailand. In 2009 they made an active expansion to Greece: Pegas has flights to Crete from Chelyabinsk, Tez Tour from Ekaterinburg. In the long term, Turkish companies aim at holiday resorts in Cyprus, Italy, Bulgaria and UAE.

The key competitors are usually backed by construction and machine-building companies, whilst Russian companies lack this kind of support; they will have to withdraw from the market or shift to less popular and less profitable tourist destinations.

In order to protect themselves from the Turkish expansion, Russian companies will have to seek support from Europe's largest tourist agencies which also believe the Russian tourist market to be a promising and strategically important place. Western companies mostly aim for the megalopolises in the central part of the country.