Renaissance Moscow hotel was especially crowded on Friday October 7th. First visitors began to register before 10 a. m., official opening time of the workshop. But real work started at 11 a. m. when regional representatives from Tver, Kaluga, Tula, and Ivanovo arrived, and the majority of Moscow visitors came. By the end of the day the guests took with them 2,000 workshop catalogues and all the stock of souvenirs.
At the workshop one could see many famous heads of travel companies (there were more than 100 of them). They quickly appreciated the advantages of VIP-lounge – a separate room where they could discuss the latest news over a cup of coffee and a glass of wine. One of the main themes, for example, was great physical shape of Pavel Klark (ATA) who has lost some weight. Tatiana Chuvilkina (Natali Tours) shared the news of organizing a large-scale director tour to UAE – the number of participants is estimated at 200 participants at least. Among visitors of VIP-lounge were also representatives of new and actively developing segments of travel industry. For example, heads of AUTO TRAVEL company that sells and rents automobile houses for traveling around Europe, acquired a lot of useful contacts. VIP-lounge guests got very interested in the possibility to express their opinion in online broadcasts. During the day heads of travel companies were offered to answer the question: ‘What good and bad things await us in the new season?’ As a result, an array of optimistic and pessimistic forecasts was formed on the forum of www.tourdom.ru site. You can review its contents in the ‘Constructive’ section of the site. It turned out that many heads of tour operator companies are worried by unforeseen circumstances that cal influence their business in a catastrophic way, irrepressible ambitions of certain market players, tour packets cost rise, and airlines appetites.
Another center of attraction for the guests were the halls where master classes of operators were conducted. Presenter at one of them, Alexey Krylov (UTS group), was greeted by the storm of applause from the audience.
Closer to 4 p. m. long-awaited finals of the ‘Sex symbol of Russian tourism’ competition started. The first place according to the results of guests’ voting (it took place during the day) was given to Serafima Semenova from Silver Tour company. The prize for her was a long fur coat from the sponsor of the prize fund of the competition, Golden Eagles tours company, and a souvenir from BANKO. The second and third places were distributed between Alyona Zotova (Krugozor company) and Irina Dmitrova (Kuda.ru). The girls were given nice short fir coats. Maria Shilenkova from Sun Express company (Nizhny Novgorod) received the prize of the guests’ affection, and Larisa Lokshina (BANKO) was given the prize of the presenter. After the awards ceremony the guests and participants of workshop had their pictures taken, drank some champagne and began to leave. Tatiana Dmitrova, director of BANKO, and Alexander Ivanov, head of BANKO Information Service, proved to be the most steadfast. Right after the competition’s end they resumed the discussion of the hottest questions in travel industry.
