In Turkey, three tour operators working in Russia were accused of misusing three million dollars. According to the Turkish media covering this scandal, the representative of one of the accused – Aneks Tura, they are trying to make tour operators “extreme” due to a drop in demand from Russia. However, tour operators deny this accusation.
As the chairman of ANEX Group Neshet Kochkar explained the essence of the conflict, Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy accused the tour operators of misappropriation of funds. More precisely, he stated that the tour operators were given a “grant” of one million dollars from the budget of the Turkish Tourism Promotion and Development Agency (TGA). Moreover, 1 million dollars was allocated for each tour operator from the Turkish trio. Those. in total we are talking about 3 million. But the investment did not work.
However, tour operators are not going to take responsibility due to weak demand in the Russian market. “The ministry allocated us an advertising budget, not money, and set the condition that we advertise at least twice as much. If not for our advertising, more flights would have been canceled in May,” Anex said, adding that tour operators invested their own funds in advertising, but no money was allocated from the budget. He also added that it is the three Turkish tour operators that “produce” $20-30 million of the TGA budget.
He also stressed that the decline in demand in the Russian market is caused by circumstances that are difficult to overcome. Including demand fell due to the consequences of the earthquake, and, more importantly, the fall of the ruble and the increase in hotel prices by up to 70%.
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