The number of Russian hotels that are ready to provide tourists with early booking discounts for the summer season of 2023 has decreased by two to three times by 2019. At the same time, the reasons cited by experts are almost opposite – some of them explain the situation by the low depth of booking and the fears of hoteliers; some, on the contrary, are sure that hotels will not have problems in the summer season, and all rooms will “leave” at full cost. This information was provided by Kommersant.
In particular, as experts from the Ostrovok.ru service said, hotels this year prefer to load standard rates for the next season. In other services, they just noted a trend towards a decrease in such offers by two to three times compared to the “pre-Covid” times. At the same time, as a standard, early booking promotions started in November and allowed hotels to receive a certain load in advance.
In Ostrovka, the changed strategy of hotels is just associated with the difficulties of planning during a period of instability. It is difficult for hotels to predict costs, taking into account changes in prices for services, food, etc., and there are also restrictions on air travel with resort regions. Hotels also note the “difficulty in planning a vacation” for tourists. As a result, discounts are given only with a non-refundable prepayment, which not every tourist is ready for.
Tour operators, in particular, Dolphin, note that the policy of hoteliers can also be explained by the expectations of a successful summer season. It makes no sense for hotels to sell places cheaper now if they can sell them for full price later, they say.
At the same time, tour operators do not refuse the practice of early booking discounts. So, “Alean” keeps the promotion with a 20% discount, “Dolphin” calls discounts up to 15%.
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