New season awaiting new hotels
The season of study tours in the Emirates (famtrip) for representatives of Russian travel agencies and leading tour operators has ended. Summed up, conclusions made, decisions made. What interesting, unusual, attractive is waiting for our guests in the new tourist season, we decided to find out from the president of one of the largest Russian companies Natalie Tours Vladimir Vorobyov.
- Vladimir, about two hundred people arrived with you in the Emirates to discuss organizational issues, get acquainted with new tour packages and hold a conference, and this has already become an annual tradition. Tell me, are there any significant changes in the direction of the United Arab Emirates?
- I think that last year everyone is waiting for the introduction of new hotels, both in Dubai itself and on the islands. And in fact, the process of preparing for the upcoming changes is already underway, because the hotel base, which is today, is very weakly or insufficiently focused on the Russian market. From the existing potential of accommodation facilities, Russian tour operators get some crumbs. We are catastrophically short of numbers.
If you look at the statistics of tourist trips from Russia to the United Arab Emirates, then in the last few years there has been a passenger flow, not more than 220-230 thousand people a year. And these numbers, unfortunately, are not increasing, but everything is connected, first of all, with the lack of numbers. Such popular areas as the coastlines of Dubai - Jumeirah, Sharjah and other emirates should be booked 2-3 months before the start of the tour, which, in principle, is not typical for the Russian market. Because our market is a market in demand. On average, a tourist trip is made by Russian tourists no more than 3 weeks before departure. And here we are losing many comers, because 2 months before the arrival day of a tourist, sales in Jumeirah are closed. There are no places.
Therefore, we look forward to the fact that in the 2008-2009's, as the new hotels, such as Atlantis for 3,000 rooms and other hotels, begin to be introduced on The Palm Jumeirah, the situation will radically change. This will allow the Russian market to work more efficiently, because the popularity of Dubai in Russia is only increasing every year, and tour operators are not yet able to satisfy this demand.
- Many Russian companies have left Dubai. Do you think that this happened precisely because the receiving party does not manage to process such an active tourist flow from Russia?
- I actually do not know about travel agencies that have left this direction. Another thing is that there is a process of concentration of volumes. That is, if before 200 thousand tourists were evenly distributed among 30-50 companies, each of which worked with a number from a thousand to 3 thousand people, now the process of concentration of the business is going on - 3-4 main leaders stand out on the market, dominant companies.
- Maybe this is due to the fact that Russian tour operators need to register in a single registry?
- This topic, in itself, is very important, but not related to the process that I mentioned earlier. It’s just that today in Russia a certain stage of market development has begun, which is described in all books on macroeconomics, when leaders stand out on the market and begin to take a larger and larger percentage of the market for themselves. In the end, this will lead to the fact that 80% of the market will be controlled by 3-4 companies.
- And then there is a tendency to unite? Leading companies become practically monopolists, having gathered smaller companies for themselves, through mergers and acquisitions?
- Speaking about the tour operator business, such companies do not have any serious assets, such as metallurgical companies. In serious manufacturing companies, the process of mergers and acquisitions is connected precisely with the fact that certain assets are acquired. And our main asset is the relationship that we have with host companies, with dealers, with hotels, with tourists - this is our brand, market recognition. Also, one of the main assets is people working in the company. The more a specialist appreciates himself, the more professional he is, the more he has a desire to work in a leading company.
Therefore, at this stage in the tourist field of Russia there is no kind of rapid absorption or merger, just while the process of enlargement of a number of companies is ongoing. The remaining companies are on the same level, their sales volumes are decreasing, and negative processes associated with the departure of professionals and the termination of dealers with them begin to occur. That is, we don’t even have to spend huge amounts of money on the purchase of such companies. Until. After all, if you focus on Western Europe, then you can observe a situation where market leaders - companies that control 5-7 billion dollars or Euro turnover, merge into one structure. First of all, this is done in order to be the number 1 company in Europe and to be competently represented in the stock market. In Russia, we have not yet reached this level.
- Should we expect similar processes in the Russian tourism market?
Everything develops according to the normal laws of society, and if you take the European tourism market, then it was blocked 30-40 years ago, while the Russian market - only 15 years ago. Therefore, we still have time, in 5-10 years we will come to the stage when the companies begin to unite, and merge, and absorb.
- Moreover, here it will already be possible to take into account the European development experience and build some of its structures, bypassing and taking into account the mistakes of others. And it will be a good experience.
- Does Natalie Tours specialize mainly in southern areas?
- We also have winter destinations, we work with ski resorts in several European countries.
Here I repeat that the tourism industry in Russia is quite young, and since it is developing quite steadily, rather than expanding, but deepening, we still have a large number of single-industry companies that deal with literally one or two areas, and, unfortunately, because of this, they have no prospects in the market. The company "Natalie Tours" tries to annually update the list of its tourist destinations.
- Each destination has its own advantages: it is either an active extreme vacation, or the unique beauty of nature, or favorable travel conditions, such as all-inclusive programs ... What attract Russian tourists to the UAE?
- Thank God that the Emirates does not have an all-inclusive system, because this is the prerogative of budget tours. Or those areas that are characterized by a lack of developed tourism infrastructure - restaurants, bars, where you can go and have a good time. For example, you can take the same Turkey. If a tourist leaves the hotel, he is faced with quite serious problems, in particular, the problem of "where to eat," as for the United Arab Emirates, but from my point of view, tourists are attracted to this direction by some cosmopolitanism. The Emirates is a modern, dynamically developing state, with excellent conditions for shopping, favorable investment opportunities, and, importantly, a warm climate and clean sea coast. This is probably all that makes tourists come here again and again in order to see with their own eyes the annual changes.
- And what changes are happening in the work of your company?
- We reviewed the rules of our activities, outlined a new scheme, and over the past year we have managed to build a two-stage system of work. In all regions of Russia, we appointed about 80 firms authorized to work with the subagent, trained their technology, installed our own software there, and about 5 thousand agencies that had previously had direct agreements with Natalie Tours and resolved all issues through Our head office, were redistributed between these 80 offices. Here we always took into account that our country is large, and tourists fly from Kamchatka and Sakhalin, and when we get to work, the working day has already ended there. But the question is not getting smaller from this, the problems need to be somehow solved. So, in every region of Russia we now have authorized offices that solve the problems of local agencies.
A year ago, we launched this program and made its announcement, and at meetings in the UAE, we held several meetings with our authorized companies, discussed many working moments, summed up the summer season and outlined plans for the near future.
- What would you like to wish Dubai as a host?
From my point of view, everything is developing quite correctly and competently, and, most importantly, at a satisfactory pace, as if there is some kind of "socialist competition" (in the good sense of the word) - who will build something faster.
The only thing I would hope for is that in the future, not only hotels will be able to get licenses for the sale of alcohol in the UAE. This would lead to the opening of good restaurants in the city, which, of course, would only add advantages to the tourist destination of Dubai. And in general, there is a sharp population growth, a huge number of new apartments are being introduced, soon restaurants at hotels will not be enough for everyone.
As I understand it, the situation here needs to change, because 2 million residents from Russia, Europe, America, Australia, who in the next few years will become part of the city’s population, will experience some inconvenience in everyday life. I think that some kind of adaptation of local rules to the needs of expatriates from different countries should still happen. Or, the second option, more new hotels with restaurants will be built. And the rest, everything is just great.
One must also keep in mind that today, for many objective reasons - the geographical location of the UAE and the changes that are currently taking place in Russia, Dubai is the most promising winter destination for Russians. Egypt, by comparison, has an equally advantageous geographical location, but there are very big doubts that there will ever be resolved issues with the service.
In addition, I can say that every year the indexation of wages in Russia is on average 40%, so over the past two years, the average salary of our citizens has doubled. And this process is unlikely to stop in the near future. Well, and as a result, there are funds for tourist trips. And since new material opportunities appear, the requirements of travelers to the service provided abroad are correspondingly growing. So we expect in the very near future, as new hotels are introduced, an increase in the tourist flow from Russia to Dubai.
- Thank you, Vladimir, for such a detailed and interesting approach to our conversation, we wish you many tourists - good and different!
