On Friday, March 12, 2010, TEZ Tour announced the launch of sales in a new direction for itself - the United Arab Emirates. According to the Turinfo portal, TEZ Tour PR Director Marina Makarkova, programs from Moscow will start on March 23, 2010 on regular Emirates Airline flights. “We have been considering this area for more than a year, but before that we were constrained by the lack of a hotel base. Now this problem has been solved, and the number of hotel rooms is quite consistent with the needs of a large company,” said M. Makarkova. At the same time, she did not name specific figures for the number of seats per week. The numbers may be released closer to the fall, when the company will put its own charters in the direction.
Almost simultaneously with Moscow, the operator began selling UAE in its offices in Kazakhstan and Armenia, where this area is quite popular. Note that in the Baltic countries, TEZ Tour offices have been successfully selling the Emirates for several years. For the players of the direction, the TEZ Tour exit was not a surprise. “We talked about this for about three years,” said Andrei Zorin, head of the Russian Express branch of the United Arab Emirates. However, as the expert noted, it is strange that the TEZ Tour program began in the spring, i.e. at the end of the season, and not in the fall, at the beginning of a new one. “Contracting with hoteliers in the direction is carried out in May-June, and in the summer there is an opportunity to prepare for sales,” argues A. Zorin.
Assessing the prospects of the UAE market with the advent of a new player, A. Zorin believes that with a high degree of probability there will be a redistribution of shares between operators operating in the mass segment: TEZ Tour, Natalie Tours, Coral Travel. “TEZ Tour, with its powerful technologies, will certainly make a difference in the market picture,” Turinfo’s interlocutor asserts, “but their output will not affect our company and niche operators in the direction who have a different target audience, a better-off customer.”
The redistribution of volumes is also indicated by the president of Natalie Tours Vladimir Vorobyov, emphasizing that price wars should not be expected. “This is not the direction where dumping can achieve something: air transportation resources are limited. Everything is decided here in other ways. The fight will not be for the client, but for numbers,” he believes. “And in this sense, a lot depends on which TEZ Tour is the host company, how strong it is. "
At the same time, V. Vorobyov noted that the number of rooms in the UAE is still growing and, accordingly, the tourist flow to this country from Russia is increasing. "Operators are increasing volumes. Everyone doesn’t have enough places in hotels right now," the expert says. “At the same time, the share of the Russian market in the total entry flow to the Emirates remains the same."
