Page 68 - RUSRptAug18

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) for the summer of 2018 , analytical agency Tourstat said on July 24. Typically tourists visit Baku for a couple of days then head off to the Caspian Sea resorts, said Tourstat, whose focus is on travel and tourism in Russia and the CIS. It was a similar picture in the next ranked city destinations — the Belarusian capital Minsk and Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty — which are seen as jumping off points for Lake Naroch in Belarus, the mountain resort of Chimbulak near Almaty and Kazakhstan’s lakeside Borovoe resort or Lake Issyk-Kul across the border in Kyrgyzstan, Tourstat said. An earlier report from the same agency found Borovoe in northern Kazakhstan was the top CIS resort for Russian tourists. Other popular cities within the CIS in summer 2018 are Yerevan, Astana, Bishkek, Tashkent, Chisinau, Dushanbe and Ashgabat.
One of Russia's five largest tour operators Natalie Tours has gone bust and left thousands of holidaymakers stranded overseas .
The company is suffering from the lack of cash and has cancelled all booked and paid tours from July 4 to September 30 due to financial problems. About 3,500 of Russian tourists remain stranded abroad. with their charter flights back cancelled. Vorobyev pledged to return them "by the end of the week".
The negative press coverage will almost certainly kill the company off believe experts as the press pick up on the drama of ordinary Russians being marooned on their holidays. In 2017 thousands of passengers got stuck in airports abroad when VIM-Avia air carrier went bankrupt , which led to a harsh criminal investigation and even to a public chastising of the responsible ministers by President Vladimir Putin .
Natalie Tours has gone bust despite a booming tourism market. In 2017, following a dive due to sanctions, income and ruble weakening, the number of Russians holidaying abroad has recovered and has almost passed its pre-crisis peak. In January-June 2017 17.1mn Russian tourists went abroad, up by 30% year-on-year.
The numbers could further increase in 2018 following the end of an air travel ban to Egypt as well as a ban on charter flights to Turkey lifted .
Vorobyev told Vedomosti that the company’s problems included lower demand for tours to Europe, some charter flights ran at a loss or with negligible margins, but at the same time he had increased wages for over 300 employers in April.
Other operators surveyed by the daily confirmed that the demand for foreign tours nosedived in June-July as many Russians decided to stay at home for the FIFA soccer World Cup, postponing travelling abroad to the second half of 2018.
9.1.10 Utilities sector news
Russia and China to build a huge Siberian power plant. On Friday 20 July, Minister of Energy Alexander Novak announced that InterRAO and State Grid Corporation of China would re-engage in talks about a possible feasibility study of a large-scale (up to 8GW) coal-fired project in Russia’s Khabarovsk with the aim of supplying electricity to China. The market responded with a 3.25% hit to InterRAO’s share price. We think the market reaction is overdone:
68 RUSSIA Country Report August 2018 www.intellinews.com