Which measures will lower prices of flights to Krasnodar Krai?
Minister for Resorts and Tourism of Krasnodar Krai Evgeny Kudelya has offered a number of solutions for lowering the prices of transportation to Krasnodar Krai at a recently-held press-conference
According to the minister, it is first necessary to increase the number of subsidized airports.
“In the Russian Government’s resolution on subsidizing flights from Siberia and the Far East to the European part of the country there is a list of airports to which there are subsidized flights. The list contains only one airport of Krasnodar Krai (Sochi Airport), but we were able to add to it the airports of Gelendzhik and Anapa. Now we are working on including Krasnodar into the list,” he said.
The minister also considers subsidizing empty seats in planes to be an important measure.
“When tour operators use a charter flight, due to a number of reasons some seats may remain empty. This does not cost much for the federal or regional budget (the authorities are ready to use the latter for co-financing), but it makes a great difference for tour operators. We can only subsidize these flights inside Krasnodar Krai, but as for flights from other regions of the country – we are hoping for the federal authorities’ support,” said Evgeny Kudelya.
Other measures for lowering transportation prices mentioned by the minister included abolishing VAT for all domestic flights and the necessity to ensure tourist flows.
“Airlines need one thing: if there is a guaranteed number of tourists that are going to buy air tickets, they organize the needed number of flights, and the price of a ticket in this case will be 2.5 thousand rubles ($72); however, no one has been able to achieve that as of yet,” said the minister.
Acting Head of Russiatourism Oleg Safonov proceeded to announce that a special group was working within the federal agency, the task of which was to work out options for lowering transportation prices in Russia.
“We expect concrete ideas for solving this issue to be worked out by the autumn of 2014,” he said.