The summer season of 2013 has become very complicated for many Russian tour operators working with Croatia. The introduction of a visa regime has revealed a number of issues in the relationships between Russian tour operators and Croatian hoteliers.
After the introduction of visas for Russians, the sale of travel packages from that country to Croatia decreased by 40-50 percent. For Russian tourists, Croatia has always been an expensive destination, and now they have to spend even more money, as they will have to pay for visas, writes the Russian Herald in an interesting article that presents the problems in Croatian tourism from the Russian perspective.
These problems are, as noted, largely related to the specifics of the Russian-Croatian partnership. Namely, Russian tour operators complain that Croatian hoteliers want to work with them exclusively under the so-called “empty for full” model, meaning that a certain number of beds in hotels are made available to them only after full or partial prepayment. In this way, the tour operator assumes all the business risk, while hotels secure reservations in advance.
Russian tour operators have tried, as further noted, to obtain competitive prices before the start of the season, but they did not find understanding. As a result, some Russian companies began to accumulate losses, and thus Ascent Travel, one of the largest companies in the industry, announced its decision to leave the Croatian market.
For the Russian travel portal Tourdom.tv, Olga Vojkina, the tourism director of Ercog, stated that the number of Russian tourists in Croatia is unlikely to decrease further, but she does not see the possibility of their share seriously increasing next year. She believes it will take several years before their numbers begin to rise again.
She also believes that Croatian hoteliers need to reconsider their agreements for next year with the Russian market and provide them the opportunity to operate in the same manner as the rest of Europe.
Mikael Danieljan, a representative of the Croatian hotel chain Maistra, believes that Croatians would not want to give up on Russian tourists, as Russian tourists are willing to spend a bit more on vacation than others. He believes that sales methods need to change, and hotelier proposals must depend on market needs and be financially viable for all parties.
