SAINT PETERSBURG, Dec 18 — Like many Russians, Maria Pchelkina enjoys winter holidays abroad, but the ruble crash means this time she’ll swap the cottage she’d been eying in Finland for a staycation in Saint-Petersburg.
The 40-year-old English language teacher is just one of many forced to give up winter vacation plans amid the collapse of the Russian currency, which has lost around 60 per cent of its value against the dollar this year.
“We don’t know what to expect from this crisis and would rather not spend our savings on travelling,” she said.
Maria has done her sums: as a result of the ruble plunge, a 10-day rental of a cottage in Finland for €1,000 (RM4,340.36) will now cost her nearly 100,000 rubles (RM5,795.766) against 45,000 rubles just few months ago—not counting transport and daily expenses, which have also soared.
The ruble plunge, sparked by falling oil prices and Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis, has already led to a 30-per cent drop in the flow of Russian tourists to Europe, the Russian Tourism Industry Union group said.
For Russian businesses specialising in foreign travel this has brought dire times and, in dozens of cases, bankruptcy.
Not such happy holidays
The first ten days of January are public holidays in Russia and the emerging middle class has increasingly been using that time off to ski in Austria, Switzerland or France, or to sunbathe on Asian beaches. The Russian cash was a welcome boost for mountain and Mediterranean resorts in the recession-hit Europe of the past several years.
But now “tour sales have almost come to a halt,” said Irina Tyurina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Tourism Industry Union, adding that the demand for trips has dropped “catastrophically” by some 50-70 per cent.
“Tour operators are cancelling their charter programs one after another, including to winter sports destinations in Europe on which all our hopes were pinned.”
Some people even prefer to pay a penalty for cancelling their bookings “because they realise that they can’t handle expenses abroad at current rates,” Tyurina said.
Self-organised trips were less affected and only dropped by 10 per cent, she added, as well as vacationing in the relatively cheap Egyptian and Turkish resorts.
But in Spain’s Costa Brava, the flow of Russian tourists—second-biggest spenders there after the Chinese—has already dropped by five per cent after years of annual growth at 15-20 per cent, said Ramon Ramos, the CEO of the local tourism federation.
“Under these conditions I cannot afford to spend money on travel. It’s too unwise,” said Ivan Makarov, a 44-year-old white-collar worker from Saint Petersburg.
Elena Yakimova, of a Saint Petersburg tourist agency Profi-Tour said that demand fell sharply this year even during the usually busy holiday season.
Boost for home tourism
Tourism experts tell the Russian media that the Crimea peninsula—annexed by Russia from Ukraine in March—and the Caucasus resort city of Sochi have replaced Paris, London and Prague as the most popular destinations for Russian tourists.
Nestled between the Black Sea and the Caucasus mountains, Sochi, which hosted Winter Olympics last February, can hardly cope with the growing influx of visitors — same as the overbooked hotels in the Moscow region, Tyurina said.
But even during the winter holidays “sales are bad. People prefer to celebrate the New Year at home,” she said.
“The overall picture is rather sad: the first thing people renounce is travelling for holidays.” — AFP-Relaxnews
