The Electronic Travel Package (hereinafter referred to as EP) system is a database in which travel agencies and tour operators must enter detailed information about all sold tours and the tourists who purchased them. It was developed in three stages by the Asteros group of companies, which won three times relevant competitions of Rostourism. Initially, it was planned to allocate 600 million rubles for the development, but in the end the budget was cut and amounted to 540 million.
"Asteros" started working in 2015, in November 2017, the head of Rostourism Oleg Safonov announced that the system was ready for work and that after some time its use would become mandatory for tour operators. At the same time, he emphasized that the main task of the system's functioning is the departure of market participants from black and gray schemes of work.
By December 2017, 100 tour operators were connected to the system in test mode, testing it and putting forward their comments and suggestions for improvement. Let us recall that the principle of the EP is as follows: tourists go to a travel agent, he sends an application to the tour operator, and the tour operator creates an electronic voucher, including all the information on the tour, and assigns it a unique serial number.
From January 1, 2018, the EP was supposed to be openly available on the Rostourism website, but this did not happen. Rostourism stated that the lack of relevant regulatory and legal acts prevented its use. Deputy head of the department Nikolai Korolev explained that such acts were being developed and would soon be sent to the government. However, in February, access to the system on the Rostourism website was closed, and in March, the Asteros company filed a claim for its own bankruptcy in the Moscow Arbitration Court.
Why didn't it work?
According to the executive director of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) Maya Lomidze, the system created by Asteros and posted on the Rostourism website did not solve the problems for which it was created.
"There was a shell that bore little resemblance to a serious system that would contain the personal data of millions of Russians. At the time of testing the system, it was impossible to make automatic selections; the main operations were performed manually. It took 10-15 minutes to enter one travel package. The main task of the electronic travel package is to understand how many travel packages were sold and to whom, and where the tourists were when the tour operator stopped operating. But in that system, data on the departure/arrival airport, hotel name, and travel package cost were placed "horizontally," all services were not "tied" to the tourist, but existed in parallel with him. Accordingly, it was impossible to determine how many, where, and when tourists were located in the system," M. Lomidze told the Interfax-Tourism portal.
As an example of the shortcomings, she cited information that the system did not have any airports of arrival in Turkey, except for Antalya. "It was impossible to separate tourists into vacationers, for example, in Belek or Bodrum. Tour operators have repeatedly stated at various meetings that it is not possible to combine their booking systems with the EP," the ATOR representative added.
Transfer to Rostec
"On May 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an order to designate JSC National Tourism Technologies (a company within the structure of the Rostec State Corporation) as the operator of the Electronic Travel Package information system. This was the result of a joint appeal by the Rostec State Corporation and the Federal Tourism Agency to the head of state," the agency's press service told the Interfax-Tourism portal.
Rostourism explained this decision by the fact that the functioning of the Electronic Travel Voucher system requires the processing of large amounts of data. "We need a powerful IT infrastructure, trained personnel, experience working with large-scale information systems, resources and technologies. Rostec State Corporation has all of this - a corporation that has accumulated enormous production, technical and technological, personnel and scientific potential," the press service said.
According to the department, the drafts of the regulatory legal acts necessary for the transfer of the system from Rostourism to Rostec are in the development stage.
According to Sergey Golov, Deputy Director of the Association of Tour Operators for Outbound Tourism, Turpomoshch, the transfer of the project to Rostec is good news for tourists, as it means that the EP will “definitely work.”
Rework or development from scratch
Rostourism stated that the system created by Asteros is technically fully ready for operation. "At the same time, we do not rule out the need for its further development in order to comply with the adopted regulatory and legal acts, to increase its convenience, to expand its functionality, etc. If the operator makes changes, the company will finance this work using its own and attracted funds," the department reported.
The Association of Tour Operators does not agree with the regulator. "Judging by the state of the system the last time it was opened for access, the system is not ready for industrial use, it lacks some of the essential points that were included in the technical specifications for its development. In our opinion, it is difficult and time-consuming to finalize it, since a fundamental revision of all its operating scenarios is required," said M. Lomidze.
At the same time, ATOR believes that in order to create a working EP, Rostec will need to interact with tour operators. “It is clear that Rostec has experience working with similar information systems. The quality of their work in this area does not raise any doubts. But without interaction with business, creating a new EP is impossible, since there are many nuances in tourism that are not reflected in the system. If the goal is to make the system function, these nuances must be taken into account,” the association representative added.
The executive director of ATOR suggested that the use of the system developed by Rostec would hardly be free for tour operators. “It would be strange if a commercial structure, having invested its money there, would operate it for free,” she said.
However, in response to a relevant question from the Interfax-Tourism portal, Rostourism stated that “the draft regulations developed for the purpose of introducing the Electronic Travel Voucher information system into industrial operation do not provide for the collection of fees from travel companies for using the system.”
Why is EP needed?
"The Electronic Travel Package will ensure protection of tourists from the unfair actions of tour operators and travel agents and the risks associated with their use of dubious and risky financial schemes. This task will be solved by monitoring the targeted use of funds received from the purchase of tourist services by citizens through the Electronic Travel Package information system and detailing information on the movement of funds," Rostourism said.
At the same time, the department specified that the system will contain information about transport services (air, train, bus tickets), transfers from the airport or train station to the hotel and back, hotel accommodation, insurance services, additional services ordered by the tourist (visa, excursions, guide services, etc.).
"The "electronic voucher" will also contribute to the whitening of the economy in terms of tourism. Unfortunately, at present, a significant part of the tourism business is in the "gray" and "black" zones. Illegal financial transactions related to the illegal withdrawal of funds abroad, shadow sales of cash, etc. are carried out through many travel companies. The Central Bank regularly reveals such facts during its supervisory activities. According to estimates by the Bank of Russia, depending on the peak tourist seasons, the volume of shadow cash turnover in the tourism sector for 2016 and 8 months of 2017 amounted to 4 to 5 billion rubles per month," the press service of Rostourism reported.
In addition, the department believes that the work of the EP will contribute to increasing the efficiency of tourist charter transportation, since the system opens up the opportunity for aviation authorities to correlate the volume of obligations assumed by airlines with their actual transportation capabilities.
"The electronic signature is also of great importance for ensuring the safety of Russian tourists abroad, as it allows us to quickly obtain accurate information about the number of our citizens vacationing in other countries, the duration of their stay, departure dates, and the hotels where they are accommodated. In emergency situations, such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, bankruptcies of travel companies, etc., such information will facilitate the organization of the return of our tourists to their homeland," the press service of Rostourism added.
According to the department, in order to achieve all these goals, the use of electronic signatures should be mandatory for market participants.
S. Golov recalled the mass bankruptcies of tour operators in the summer of 2014, when "Turpomoshch" could not identify the number of victims for a long time. "There were about 65 thousand of them. It was impossible to immediately find out in which hotels, regions and countries they were, since the tour operators that ceased operations did not disseminate this information. The EP will ensure the accounting of tourists, all data will be in the system," he said.
The state company Rostekhnologii (since July 2014 – Rostec) was created in 2007 to assist in the development, production and export of high-tech industrial products for civilian and military purposes. It includes more than 700 companies from various fields of activity, including KAMAZ, AvtoVAZ, Rosoboronexport, Russian Helicopters and many others.
Source: tourism.interfax.ru