Vietnamese travel companies "broken" after terrorist attack in Russia

St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Photo: Advantour — St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow

Tours to Russia have been quite "quiet" since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out. A few have just reopened, with a few hundred trips to Russia, scheduled to depart as early as May, and there have been almost no changes in prices and related procedures.

However, on the afternoon of March 25, Vietfoot Travel General Director Pham Duy Nghia said that they were in a "broken state" because tours departing to Russia during the "White Nights" (late May to early July) were likely to have to change direction or be canceled. These tours were scheduled to visit St. Petersburg and the capital Moscow - where the terrorist attack on the evening of March 22 killed more than 130 people.

Mr. Nghia said that tours to Russia at Vietfoot Travel are one of the few that have restarted since last year and generally have few customers. At the end of last year, the Russian Tourism Alliance in Vietnam, consisting of 6 major travel agencies, predicted that the situation would be "quieter" this year, so the company booked a series of Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways tickets for more than 10 groups with 9-day itineraries and started departing from the end of May.

The groups had a "relative number of guests", depositing 10 million VND per person. However, immediately after the terrorist attack, many guests requested to cancel their schedules and get their deposits back.

The company is advising customers to change their travel plans to Türkiye, Georgia or Dubai. However, even if customers accept, they will still have to bear some of the losses. If customers agree to change their tour to Türkiye, the company will not have enough flight tickets and will have to buy new tickets at a higher price.

With the Dubai tour option, they can negotiate with Qatar Airways to change the schedule, but the tour is not competitive because this airline does not fly directly and has to transit in Doha. Meanwhile, the Georgia tour is not popular with Vietnamese customers.

Although the damage has not been estimated, settling deposits with airlines is also a "headache" for travel companies. Mr. Nghia said the deposit for Qatar Airways is 70 million VND, and for Turkish Airlines is 50 million VND for each group of 25 guests.

Ms. Luu Thi Thu, Deputy Director of Hoang Viet Travel, said that she is also negotiating with customers. The proposed options include returning the deposit, changing to a tour in Türkiye, moving to a tour in Russia in the fall, or another tour among the products the company is selling.

For the Türkiye tour, the company has enough series of tickets to support, customers in need only need to pay the remaining amount and can buy the tour at the original price of about 44.9 million VND per person. After the meeting on the afternoon of March 25 with Turkish Airlines, the airline allowed the travel company to reserve the money to change to another schedule and route. Groups departing in May will lose their deposit if they cancel because this is not a case of force majeure.

However, the new Turkish Airlines ticket price is higher than the old one, making a tour to Türkiye cost about 4-5 million VND more.

"We don't have a specific plan yet, but we will definitely support customers as much as possible in this case," said Ms. Thu, adding that tours to Russia that last until October are temporarily suspended.

TH (according to VnExpress)

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