Two Crimeas – Two Ways of Life This year there will be no harvest of stone fruits in Crimea due to spring frosts and grain crops due to the June drought. Therefore, the task of replenishing the republican budget is entrusted to holidaymakers, more precisely, to ...

Two Crimeas - two ways of life

IN

this year in the Crimea there will be no harvest of stone fruits due to spring frosts and cereals due to the June drought. Therefore, the task of replenishing the republican budget is entrusted to holidaymakers, more precisely, to business entities serving them. Opening the summer season, the Minister of Resorts of Crimea Alexander Taryanik said:

“If a tourist does not have the means to pay five dollars a day, let him stay to dig a garden. There is nothing to go to us without this money.”

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The statistics seem to be encouraging: in May, the peninsula was visited by 6% more tourists than in the last (very successful) season. But in this case, you need to count not by heads, but by hryvnias. In the summer of 2001, the four millionth tourist was very happy, and in the fall they asked: “Where is the money, Zin?”

Among the 46 unprofitable health resorts were Ai-Danil, Artek, Ai-Petri, and Livadia. Of the 11 sanatoriums of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, only one is profitable, and even then with a meager profit.

After analyzing these figures, the Crimean authorities made an unexpected conclusion: private traders should be shaken. Apparently, each official has his own personal reason not to touch this or that sanatorium. For decency, they covered themselves with the following figure: out of a million-odd tourists who arrived in May-June, only 154,000 rested in an organized manner. The rest are in the private sector. Fortunately, the choice here is limitless: from a bed with a bedside table to mansions with European-style renovation.

Most of the happy owners of dachas and private houses on the coast have already forgotten how to plant potatoes and other crops. Their land plots were overgrown with tiny outbuildings and sheds. Buying a bunk in this architectural structure costs three to five dollars. At the same time, only two mini-hotels are officially registered on the peninsula.

The authorities have not yet figured out how to spud these seasonal entrepreneurs: the legislation of Ukraine does not allow the tax authorities to roam too much. But while the government was thinking, there were people who united the chaos of the resort market into a rigid system. The Crimeans call them breeders. The lion's share of the money brought to the sunny peninsula by tourists settles in their pockets.

Externally, the system looks like this. Even in Simferopol, a visitor stunned by the heat shock is spudded by cheerful guys: where do you want to relax, at what price. The victim is put into public or private transport (depending on income) and right there on the mobile phone they tell the accomplices on the coast the names and signs of the clients. In the resort towns, the tourist is intercepted immediately at the station and taken to the place.

If you managed to bypass the dense network of distributors in Simferopol, you still won’t slip past them at your destination. Grandmothers with homemade advertisements “I rent housing” are an endangered species. Those of them who have apartments closer to the sea are already crushed by the breeders. Those who remain are mercilessly squeezed out of the services market. They are ready to rent housing for 1-2 dollars, but it is more profitable for breeders to hand over the keys to more expensive apartments to a tourist who has not yet acclimatized.

The breeder sits on a percentage - one tenth of the transaction. More daring business is also practiced. They negotiate with the client at the rate of, for example, 15 dollars, and with the owners they pay 10 bucks a day. It often happens like this: a tourist gets enough sleep, walks around the town and finds cheaper housing. Offers honor to the hostess: keep the money for one or two days, we take the rest and move out. But this “rest” is just net earnings minus 10%. Business is zero, and cleaning the premises and washing clothes, as they say, at the expense of the host. If the difference in prices pops up, the tourist himself flies by. In this case, it is useless to contact the police.

It is useless to go to the authorities. One grandmother, who offered her services at the bus station in Alushta, was simply beaten by the breeders. She went to complain to the executive committee. There, a polite official suggested that she draw up a written statement and attach similar papers signed by two witnesses. It is naive to assume that the authorities do not know about the system of divorcing. Most likely, just they supervise it.

In small Crimean villages, everyone knows each other. Local residents know for certain that only at the end of the last season, the most successful breeders bought several apartments for themselves. But laborers of bus stations (they are really black from sunburn) are only the tip of the iceberg. According to unofficial data, about a billion dollars is spinning in the shadow resort business in Crimea.

If you look at it, then, having declared war on private traders, the authorities decided to fight with themselves. These grandmothers, who have not yet given up, will eagerly convince the tax inspector that relatives have come to them to rest. On a plot overgrown with outbuildings, the publican knows exactly which door to go through in order to leave completely satisfied.

Speaking of grandmothers. The breeding system destroys them not only directly, but also indirectly. Squeezed out from the main flow of tourists, the poor private traders indulge in all serious. If earlier they sorted out tourists, now they take everyone in a row. This is used by scammers. They pay fifty dollars, give fake passports, and then, taking advantage of the absence of the owners, they drive a van and take everything clean out of the apartment, even old furniture. In one of the villages, two "tourists" killed their mistress.

The breeding system makes the rest five times more expensive. Grandmothers-participants are sure that only the rich go to Crimea, ready to pay 20 bucks for a bed "with their feet in the sea." These don't get dressed at all during the holidays, they go all day in swimsuits. And the grandmother’s client, ready to put on his clothes and ride a trolleybus to the beach, agreeing to cook porridge on the stove from cereals bought in a grocery store, remained digging his garden in the belief that Crimea was too expensive for him.

The breeding system is deadly for the peninsula. Already, most of the resort towns owe huge sums for electricity and gas. Outages are coming. Where to get money if they float into the pockets of smart guys at the bus station? The last two successful seasons did not affect the well-being of Crimea's infrastructure. And erosion will continue.