Unplanned holiday

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   On Thursday, on the 3rd of November IS BANKO received two alarming messages from travel agents related to problems in Egypt. One message came by e-mail: it described the situation of the evening of the 2nd of November when Russian holiday-makers should have left Hurgard but for an unknown reason the flight was cancelled. (the issue was widely discussed on the Kurilka forum of www.tourdom.ru). A BANKO correspondent addressed to the company-consolidator ‘Pegas-touristic’ for information and discovered that holiday-makers had to stay in Egypt because the plane of “VIM-avia” company broke down. ‘As consolidator of the flight we have done everything possible. We put all 220 tourists in the all inclusive Golden Five 5* hotel until the next flight the following day’ said Anna Podgornaya, sales director of ‘Pegas touristic’ company.
   The air carrier declined to issue a statement to BANKO regarding the reasons for the grounding of the flight. As we discovered, tourists were taken from the hotel to be put on a flight to Moscow at 19:00 MSK on Wednesday while the flight was scheduled to depart at 22:00msk. The flight was delayed by a day.
   A second message was triggered by events in another popular resort in Sharm El Sheikh. According to Svetlana Khrustaleva, manager of the Egyptian destination in tourist company ‘Green-mar’, tourists that arrived there on the 2nd of November at 9:30 and had to wait for 12hours to move in the hotel: ‘I negotiated with Dream Vacations myself’ as ‘Deep tour’ through which tourists were sent refused to clear up the situation. In the hotel it was stated that one day of accommodation was not paid for by the company’. According to the agency, by 22:30 tourists were at last provided with rooms, although for the moment ‘Deep tour’ paid for 3 days of accommodation only. According to tourists from Sharm El Sheikh calling to ‘Green mar’, it is alleged that there is a similar situation in other hotels receiving tourists from the same flight. Eldar Mustafaev, managing director of ‘Deep tour’ company denied these allegations: ‘We are talking about 18-19 hotel rooms only. We have been looking for a solution and by the end of the day we await confirmation about further arrangements of accommodation for our tourists.’