On January 29, 2019, the Rostourism Agency held a regular meeting of the Turpomoshch legal committee. The main issue on the agenda was cooperation and determination of responsibilities in providing emergency assistance to tourists between the Association, airlines, and third parties. persons in connection with the situation that arose due to the failure of the tour operator "Pearl River" to fulfill its obligations to tourists in December 2018.
As the Association recalled, on December 12, 2018, the Supervisory Board decided to provide emergency assistance to clients of the tour operator operating under the "Pearl River" brand, i.e., to evacuate them.
The transportation of Russian tourists from Hai'an to their homeland took place from December 12 to 21, 2018. A total of 1,317 people were transported to Russia using a reserve fund totaling 68.3 million rubles.
"This consumer dispute clearly demonstrated that the legislative regulation mechanism has worked: Turpomoshch filed a recourse claim with the Orbita insurance company and received payment in accordance with legal requirements. The decisions and conclusions of Turpomoshch's Legal Committee will be submitted to the Association's Supervisory Board for review," the Association noted.
As a reminder, on December 12, Rostourism removed Pearl River from its register of tour operators. Shortly before, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Pearl River's legal entity, Travel Designers, whose management is suspected of abuse of power.
It should be added that agencies previously outraged by the Pearl River situation published a petition on the portal Change.org, calling on the country's leadership to reimburse affected tourists for their cancelled trips and to "amend the procedure for registering as a tour operator based on planned turnover at the legislative level." The petition was addressed to the Ministry of Economic Development and the Presidential Administration of Russia.
Source: trn-news.ru