For the winter 2010, Transaero will start direct flights to Egypt from St-Petersburg, offering 4 weekly flights to Hurgada and Sharm el Sheikh. According to Neva, the largest TO in the region, the program is already in demand. Neva also launched a direct charter flight to Taba, (Egyptian resort), which is a new destination for St-Petersburg and Neva plans to develop this offer to its clients wishing to buy combined tours, as Taba is near to Jordan and Israel.
In Yekaterinburg, Intourist and Coral Travel have increased the number of their flights to Egypt by 4 times. They will fly to Sharm el Sheikh and Hurgada by Rossiya Airlines and Transaero. Annex Tour is also considering more flights, but Tez Tour will keep the same volume as last year. Market leaders, Capital Tour and Natalie Tours will be newcomers this year in Krasnodar, also offering charter programs to Egypt. Key tour operators working in Yekaterinburg announced more flights to UAE and Thailand. Experts are skeptical about whether such increases are necessary as actual demand from the Russian regions, was substantially down in the summer of 2009.
Coral Travel and Tez Tour have also started flights to Egypt from another Urals city of Perm that has a population of nearly one million.
In Novosibirsk, over 50% of direct charter flights during the winter of 2010 will be to South-East Asia: Thailand (Bangkok and Phuket), Hainan (China), Vietnam (Saigon) and Bali. Traffic to Thailand is expected to increase by 1.5 times. Local TO's, Glarus Tours, Skatt, Siyatt and Globus Tour offer 10-day programs to Bali until April and are planning to make this program a year-round product.
Pegas Touristik will start a year-round charter programs from Novosibirsk to Hurgada and Sharm el Sheikh, and also direct charter flights to Bangkok, Phuket and Goa. This means about 4.5 times increase of volumes of this TO compared to last winter.
The Novosibirsk office of S7 Tour expect a 22.5% increase in traffic, its key destinations will include Thailand, Hainan, Vietnam and Dubai. Pegas and S7 Tours will control almost 90% of all charter flights from Novosibirsk. There will also be direct charters to Bangkok by Natalie Tours.
According to STI (Siberia Travel Industry Association), from Oct 2009 to April 2010, 273 regular and charter flights are expected to fly from Novosibirsk, which is about 40 flights per month. In 2009, 63,000 tourists traveled abroad from Novosibirsk during winter period, but the expectations for 2010 are much higher.
In Nizhny Novgorod (a city located on the Volga with a population of over one, 44,000 people travelled abroad from May-July 2009, which was 17% higher than in 2008. Apart from traditional destinations such as Egypt and Turkey, locals companies also offer European ski destinations, a new product in the region. Nizhny Novgorord.
From Krasnodar (a city located on the Black sea not far from Sochi), new flights will be added for the New Year holidays period, traditionally they fly to Finland and the Czech Republic, but this year there will be additional flights to Paris, Plovdiv in Bulgaria and Verona in Italy. There will also be direct flights to Pattaya, Thailand, organized by the Moscow-based TO Danco Travel. Other destinations with direct access are: Rimini, Egypt, Istanbul, Vienna, Dubai, Israel, Jordan and Cyprus.
And finally, Kaliningrad, Russia's most Western enclave, lost almost all its regular direct flights to Europe after the bankruptcy of its local carrier KD Avia. At the moment, travelers to Scandinavia have to fly via Moscow or St-Petersburg, and those heading to Western or Central Europe have to find connecting flights via Warsaw, Vilnus, Gdansk or Riga. Pegas Touristik is the leading charter consolidation company in Kaliningrad, while another key player in the region, is Anex Tour, but the latter has cancelled its charters to Egypt for this winter season. Also charters to Israel or Karlovy Vary, have been cancelled for this season due to a substantially reduction in the overall outbound traffic from the region.