You can’t prohibit booking

Officials spoke out against the ban in Russia Booking.com

At the beginning of the week, it became known that the European Booking.com hotels service can be banned in Russia. A letter with a request to consider such a proposal was received by Rosturism from the Ministry of Culture. He was sent to the reception of the ministry by the head of the tourist service tourist service Sergey Voitovich, who stated that foreign reservation services were crowding out their Russian competitors. He called this proposal “response” to US sanctions.

Rostourism said that he would decide after receiving the opinions of specialized organizations, June 4. But so much time was not needed to wait. Organizations that spoke publicly were against limiting the work of Booking.com. After such an operational and categorical response in Rosturism, they hastily stated that they had neither authority nor plans to regulate the service. The Ministry of Culture, who called the transfer of the assignment to Rosturism with the “technical procedure”, also disowned from everything that was happening.

The main claim to Booking.com by Voitovich was that the service was practically engaged in tour operator activities (allows hotels, flights), but does not pay contributions like Russian tour operators, because it is not legally.

Also, the service will not receive sanctions by Rospotrebnadzor if negative customer reviews come to its work. Voitovich noted that we are not talking about the full blocking of Booking.com, he proposed to introduce restrictions on the service only on internal directions - a counter -sanction measure in this case will allegedly deprive it of Russia who travel in Russia.

Such clarification is not surprising, because “its tourist service” positions itself as a tour operator in domestic tourism.

And, as The Bell found out, this service also turned out to be a contractor of Rosturism-according to Spark-Interfax, in 2016-2017, the company received 5 Rosturism contracts for events abroad.

The first vice-president of the Association of Russian Tour operators, Vladimir Kantorovich, spoke out against Booking.com. But, as he told the “new”, there really is a problem, but it is not in the presence of a competitor in the market, but in legislation:

- Classic tour operator companies are greatly discriminated, but by our legislators. When they made the next amendments to the law on the basics of tourist activities, they completely lost sight of the fact that we live in the 21st century and Internet technologies advanced very much forward. They completely forgot about companies with services on the Internet - just as if they were not there. As a result, it turned out that the companies that work in offline were discriminated. There are a lot of restrictions and requirements to them, primarily a financial nature. We are obliged to create warranty funds, are obliged to insure our civil liability, pay contributions to the organization that accumulate our money in case something happens to tourists. From which the companies operating online are absolutely delivered. And since they have much less costs, honest competition does not work.

Kantorovich also gives an example that in Russia, travel agencies (not tour operators) are forbidden to engage in cross -border activities:

“You cannot come to the travel agency and ask you to book a hotel in Turkey for seven days. In Sochi you can, but in Turkey - no.

If the company is online, it does not experience any problems. ”

According to the interlocutor of “Novy”, the association of tour operators asked for a revision of the law to both the Duma and its developers, but did not receive an answer.

A number of specialized organizations have already opposed the ban on Booking.com, from which Rosturism was going to wait for an answer until June 4. For example, the Russian analogues of the service - Acase.ru ("Academy") and Twil.ru.

Alexander Kournosov, deputy general director of the tour operator Akadservis (which industry representatives call the first in Russia after Booking.com, the new reservation service told that their position is “negative”:

- The use of administrative methods for eliminating competitors negatively affects the competitiveness and development of the economy, its investment attractiveness. It is unlikely that foreign investors will invest in the country's tourist infrastructure, if, on the basis of political background, one can subsequently prohibit their activities in the country.

Oksana Shustikova, Director of Business Development Tvil.ru, told NEW that their service is already successfully competing with Booking.com in the Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory:

- We work there much better than any other Western service, so we are not experiencing problems. And we do not see the point of prohibitions. Competition only spurbs us at work.

Olga Sanaeva, vice president of the Russian Union of Trade, is sure that the service will not be blocked because of its popularity among Russian users, but expressed the hope that Booking.com work in one legal field with Russian tour operators. The President of the Russian Hotel Association Gennady Lamshin also stated that the hotels are against such an offer. But he also explained that from April 2017, hotels, in addition to the commission, by order of the Ministry of Finance, also pay VAT with the commission. According to Lamshin, to resolve the situation, it is necessary to reduce this commission.

“Such issues must be resolved at the legislative level, equalizing in the rights of all market participants, and not by blocking, prohibitions,” Kantorovich is sure. - Now this is just a fashionable topic that a colleague decided to use. It is clear that it is more convenient for him to work without competitors. He tried to defeat the administrative resource.

The Ministry of Culture has already officially reported: Booking.com does not threaten anything, the Ministry categorically against blocking and restrictions in its work, and a request to Rostourism was only a technical formality. Rostourism is also officially against, which means - an attempt to find an “asymmetric answer” for sanctions this time did not find support.