The Tourpomoshch Association will send a list of outbound tour operators that systematically fail to report on the number of tourists served and the average cost of a tour product to the Russian Federation's regulatory authorities, Interfax reports, citing to Rostourism.
"After amendments to the law on tourism activities came into force, requiring tour operators to provide data on the number of tourists they serve and the total price of the tour product sold, Rostourism and Turpomoshch were faced with the fact that many market participants began submitting inaccurate information. Their declared prices for tour products were significantly lower than the average market level, and their declared volumes of activity did not correspond to expert estimates of the scale of their business," the agency's website stated.
Rostourism noted that such actions by tour operators lead to underestimation of the size of their personal liability funds, as well as the amount of civil liability insured. "All this leads to tour operators failing to fulfill their obligations to tourists in the event of bankruptcy or termination of their tour operator activities. An example is the situation with the Natalie Tours group of companies, whose legal entities had a total financial guarantee of just over 150 million rubles, while their total liabilities to tourists exceeded 1.5 billion rubles," the agency reported.
Rostourism emphasized that the head of the agency, Oleg Safonov, had previously instructed that measures be taken to prevent tour operators from understating their personal liability funds and the amount of insurance coverage provided for civil liability insurance for failure to fulfill obligations under contracts for the sale of tourism products.
The list of "problematic" tour operators included those who systematically failed to fully and within the timeframes stipulated by law to comply with the requirements for submitting reports to "Turpomoshch" (Tourist Assistance), information on the total price of the tour product, the number of tourists, and the average cost of the tour product in the outbound tourism sector.
"It was decided to clarify and adjust this list and submit it to the Russian Ministry of Culture for inclusion in the plan for inspections of economic entities in 2019," Rostourism concluded.
Source: trn-news.ru