#17 - JRL 8088 - JRL Home
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004
From: Neil McGowan <neil@trans-siberian.co.uk>
Subject: Re: 8087-Dolan-Merry-Wolpin/ Normal Country?
I would like to comment upon and expand the point made by Joseph Wolpin in JRL 8087 - from my professional perspective as a Travel Industry professional, author, and Senior Guest Lecturer at the Moscow Govt Academy of Tourism.
>> The authors’ statistical evidence that Russians’ lives are improving often lacks context. For example, the fact that “the number of Russians going abroad as tourists rose from 1.6 million in 1993 to 4.3 million in 2000,” is superficial. Where are most of these Russian tourists going? Many can only afford a cheap trip to Turkey, Finland and other nearby destinations. <<
This very pertinent comment is not only factually correct, but arises from a further matter which has not so far been mentioned.
Even without regard to the disparity in quality of accommodation and services experienced on arrival abroad, it is *physically cheaper* for most Russians to buy a package holiday to Turkey or Egypt, than one in their own country. The only way in which an individual could holiday - let us say, on the Russian Black Sea - for less than a trip to Turkey is if they had relations there to stay with, and travelled by train 3rd-class. Even a dismal soviet-standard hotel will cost more than a tourist-class 3* hotel in Turkey. On Saturday I'm flying from Moscow to Ekaterinburg for a biz trip. For the price of my round-trip air ticket alone, I could have flown to Cyprus with 7 nights included hotel and half-board. To use "access to foreign holidays" as a yardstick is totally meaningless, and indicates a stone-age attitude rooted in soviet-era prejudice - when "only the nomenklatura could get a trip abroad", and it actually "meant" something to do so? It also indicates why the Russian inbound and domestic tourism industry is in terminal decline (except for city-break destinations like St Petersburg) in the regions - because it offers abysmal value to both Russians and foreigners alike. Why the hell would you part with over $1000 for a round-trip air ticket from Moscow to Kamchatka or Sakhalin... (on a 30-year-old aircraft with rudeness thrown-in free) when you get get a whole flight-inclusive package holiday in Egypt for $330 this week? My friend Zhenya jokingly suggests that the existence of clients of mine from the West - who are ready to spend three times the price of a nice holiday in Cyprus to go instead to Tuva and spend a week living in a yurt with nomads - proves that Marx was indeed right, and that capitalism will ultimately die through its own decadence. Gorby need only have held-on for a decade more...?
Neil McGowan
CEO
The Russia Experience Ltd
(UK Tour Operators to Russia).