"Crimean campaign" of Turkish resorts

In Turkey, they were afraid that Russian tourists would move to the Crimea. This did not happen

The annexation of Crimea caused concern in Turkey - especially among those who are connected with the tourism business. However, fears that Russian tourists will exchange Antalya and Kemer for Yalta and Gurzuf, in this holiday season were not confirmed. While Türkiye is clearly won by Crimea in a duel for vacationers.

On the streets of the Mediterranean resorts of Turkey, ATMs with Russian rubles are installed, store owners attach price tags in Turkish and Russian, restaurant owners study Russian cuisine. “Türkiye is ready to fight for a Russian tourist,” the employee of one of the Yusuf hotels tells me. “In the new season, every Turks working in resort hotels will be good to speak Russian.” To do this, organize special free courses, but so far they cannot agree on whose expense training will be conducted. Although I must say that a significant part of the local population already owns the Russians: guides, taxi drivers, owners of small and medium -sized businesses, designed mainly for Russian tourists.

In Turkey, they were afraid that Russian tourists would move to the Crimea. This did not happen

Many entrepreneurs have previously visited Russia, some even got wives there. Now in broken Russian, they call Russian tourists passing by. To shout out competitors, they hire invalid, which with a megaphone in their hands with great enthusiasm praise the goods: fur products, gold jewelry and Turkish textiles. Annoying loud sellers cause discontent among many Russians. The Ministry of Environmental Protection was forbidden to make noise after midnight in resort places, in the territories adjacent to coastal hotels.

Locals say that the Mediterranean resort Kemer resembles the Russian Republic. A five -minute drive from the city - a five -star hotel Kremlin Palace, a copy of the Moscow Kremlin. In a hotel built more than ten years ago for Russian tourists, there is a red square, Spasskaya tower, carpet paths, faceted glasses, beds of Stalin times. A few years ago, crowds of tourists came to stroke the local attraction. Today you will not surprise them. In close proximity, several several five -star giants for Russians grew. Says a resident of Kemer Jam Altynkek :

- Türkiye is a Russian -speaking country. In the resorts everywhere there are staff who owns the Russians. The owners of the hotels do not want to hire staff without knowledge of the Russian language. Even the cooks are required to know the preferences of Russians. The hotels promise to start cooking Russian dishes - borsch, cutlets, Russian salad. But the authorities do not want to serve cheap tourists and talk about the cancellation of the All -inclusive system (All Inclusive). True, so far this is only conversations: everyone understands that the abolition of this system will lead to the death of a Turkish tourism business. Most Russians will then refuse to travel to Turkey and go to Sochi or Crimea. Türkiye will lose millions of dollars that Russian tourists bring.

The new "Crimean campaign" of the Turks is called the past summer tourist season. After Russia annexed Crimea, the real battle for Russian tourists flared up in Turkey. The Russian authorities urge to abandon travel to rest abroad, including to Turkey, and in order to attract tourists to their own Black Sea resorts, they launched a large -scale propaganda campaign. By order of the Government, Aeroflot introduced a common tariff for economy class tickets to Crimea: the cost of a flight there and back was about eight thousand rubles, which Turkish newspapers wrote with anxiety.

Despite political calls, many Russians still went to Turkey

The current Crimean leader of Crimea Sergei Aksenov said that the number of people who want to visit Crimean resorts is growing. And Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev promised citizens preferential trips and claimed that about two million Russian tourists would go to Crimea. He also called on Russian airlines to significantly reduce ticket prices so that they were cheaper than in Turkey. "The current political situation threatened the death of the tourist sector of our country, which is designed mainly for Russian tourists," says Aikhan Kuran, an employee of the Istanbul tourist agency:

-Popular Russian Internet resources promised that about four million Russians would go to the Crimea. But according to the results of the season, this resort was visited only by about eight hundred and fifty thousand Russian tourists. Despite political calls, many Russians still went to Turkey. The number of Russian tourists who visited our country is growing annually. If in 2011, Turkish resorts visited about 600 thousand tourists, then in 2013 their number increased to three and a half million people.

According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, by the number of vacationers last summer season , Russians reached the first place , ahead of German and Dutch tourists. The Sabah newspaper reported that "those who refused to travel to Europe went to Turkey-due to a sharp increase in the euro, the general political situation and reports of Western sanctions." Popular tourist portals counted by the Turkish resorts of Russians. Already in June, their number exceeded two million, and in general, more than four million Russians rested in Turkey over the past summer season.

The employee of the Istanbul tourist agency "Track Salal" asks not to name her name, fearing the discontent of the leadership because of the disclosure of supposedly confidential information. She says that those who had now visited the Russian Crimea complained about problems with the local police, a low level of service, poor food and too expensive flights. The Russian authorities offered an alternative option - the railway and free transportation through the Kerch Strait. However, transport highways could not serve the entire stream of people who wanted to get to the Crimea. Turkish engineer Aydin , an employee of the marine transport company, talks about how Turkish and Greek ferries transported Russian tourists through the Kerch Strait:

- The Russian authorities ordered several additional ferries from Turkey and Greece to transport tourists. They worked around the clock and still could not accommodate everyone. There was a real chaos. The lines of tens of kilometers were formed. The authorities promised to build a bridge over the strait or dig a tunnel. But it is not known when this will happen. And the railway station in Simferopol was not adapted to the passenger flow and is under reconstruction.

Many tourists could not buy the promised cheap flights to the Crimea, which the Russian authorities promised at the beginning of the season. In the summer, airlines sold at a preferential price only a limited number of places. The remaining tickets went on sale at a market price. “Tickets to Turkey and Crimea were about the same way, but the difference as the service was obvious,” says the guide of Osman , who meets the coming Russian tourists in the resort town of Bodrum, at the Dalaman airport:

The cost of a two -week vacation in Crimea in a four -star hotel is almost half as the price of the same rest in Turkey

-Many tourists told me that they decided to go to Turkey because of the insignificant difference in price. The cost of the air travel to the Crimea was no cheaper than a ticket to Antalya. In addition, in protest against the annexation of the peninsula, the Ukrainian authorities demanded to cancel the flights of all Russian aircraft in the Crimea over the territory of Ukraine. They called these flights illegal and threatened airlines with high fines

Why do Russians choose Turkey? This question is asked by the authors of the popular tourist portal . The main reasons, in their opinion, are such. Firstly, the cost of a two-week vacation in Crimea in a four-star hotel is almost half as much as the price of the same rest in Turkey. Secondly, Crimean boarding houses, sanatoriums and hotels are mainly built during the USSR and cannot be compared with modern Turkish hotels. They are not able to offer a full guesthouse and require an additional fee for parking, drinking, towels and using a sauna and a pool. According to the newspaper Kommersant , the Minister of Resorts and Tourism of Crimea Elena Yurchenko in April claimed that the average price of a ten -day vacation in Crimea for one person would be more than thirteen thousand rubles in the “low” season and about twenty -five thousand - in “high” (along with the air -airway). According to her, this is the price of placement in a three -star hotel with a full boarding house. The minister assured that this proposal is significantly more profitable than the Turkish direction. However, the Ukrainian "Business Capital" reported that in fact the situation with the prices of recreation in Crimea is completely different . For this amount in the Crimea, you can count on placement in a hotel without repair and air conditioning, far from the sea, but not on vacation according to the "All inclusive" system.

Politics this year with unprecedented force intervened in the business of the tourist business. The independent Istanbul journalist Mert Caart says:

- Despite political disagreements, Türkiye remains friendly Russia, although earlier the Turkish government did not recognize the annexation of Crimea and even threatened with return measures in the event of repressive actions against the Crimean Tatars. Economic cooperation between the two countries is growing. Türkiye has become one of the main suppliers of goods from the so -called "sanctions list" of food, which Russia refused to purchase from Western countries. However, the number of Russian tourists can decrease due to the political situation, and not only in Russia, but also in our country. For example, due to the fact that the rules of conduct in public places that the ruling Islamist party are introduced in Turkey.

Supporters of the opposition believe that the Islamist government began a real attack on Turkish resorts. Under the pressure of the ruling party, the sale of alcohol was previously banned at night. In some Mediterranean hotels, behaviors for tourists appeared. Here is one of the points: "Foreign tourists are prohibited from walking around the city in bathing suits so as not to cause discontent from the local believing population. It should avoid intoxicated in public places and openly express their intimate feelings." For morality reasons, several semi-aligned nudist beaches were closed on the coast of the Aegean Sea, and several Mediterranean hotels ceased to settle single men-in order to prevent the geyan tourists to their territory, motivating the fact that Turkish resorts position themselves primarily as a place of family vacation. Opposition journalists say that many religious owners of a number of hotels do not welcome noisy tourists and do not want to settle Russians who are characterized by a tendency to drink alcoholic beverages.

In general, the offensive on alcohol and tobacco is the non -Islamist Recylam Recep Erdogan, the current president, and before that, the Prime Minister of Turkey began, after the Party of Justice came to power, about ten years ago. Erdogan more than once called the "drunkard" of the founder of the Turkish Republic of Kemal Ataturk, who was really distinguished by love for alcohol. Allegedly, following the example of the European Union, he forbade smoking in public places, which, however, caused understanding from the population. Türkiye is really one of the most smoking countries in Europe. To limit the drinking of alcohol in resorts, Erdogan planned to create “drinking zones” remote from cities. More radical sentences were also heard: to create a kind of ghetto - to evict all the drinkers so that they do not interfere with living and praying to Muslims. These radical proposals caused quite understandable indignation among the owners of Mediterranean restaurants and bars. After all, Türkiye is a secular country. The bill was not approved, limiting the sale of alcohol in the evening and in the immediate vicinity of mosques.

We were accused of drunkenness in public places, although we drank only a couple of beer mugs

However, the politician pursued by the authorities led to the fact that in a number of cities more and more restaurants and bars refused to sell alcohol, citing difficulties in obtaining a license. Newspapers wrote that the ability to drink alcohol is increasingly dependent on who rules in this area of the city - Islamists or the opposition secular party. Meanwhile, tourists visiting Turkey began to complain about the too zealous behavior of police officers, who, according to them, allegedly staged a hunt for the tipsy foreigners at the Mediterranean resorts. The prosperity newspaper "Hurriet" reported that in May this year, the police fined several German tourists for drinking alcohol, who at first forced to pass the test of alcohol in the blood, and although the level of alcohol turned out to be insignificant, they had to pay a fine equivalent to thirty euros. “I'm still shocked, ” a German tourist wrote on the Internet, “ we were accused of drunkenness in public places, although we drank only by a couple of beer mugs.” The police rejected all the accusations, claiming that such measures were aimed exclusively at maintaining the calmness of vacationers.

The seller of alcohol in Istanbul Murat, however, notes that the restrictions on the sale of alcohol will not benefit. In Turkey, cases of fake alcohol poisoning among tourists have become more frequent. A few years ago, fake whiskey caused the death of several Russians who swam on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. The organizers of this tour and sellers of surrogate alcohol were sentenced to long prison terms. However, this is unlikely to help, Murat says: "Any, even the most stringent prohibitions only increase the desire to violate them. The ban on alcohol will lead to even more surrogate on the coast."