"Polar Tour used an extremely vicious microfinance pyramid scheme, it is not a tour operator, but a reseller. There are several more similar resellers on the market who will end up the same way," says Aleksan Mkrtchyan, director of the Pink Elephant travel agency network.
He added that the Polar Tour was not a significant player in the market outside Moscow.
"The Polar Tour company offered travel agents prices 1-2% lower than tour operators, and a commission 1-2% higher. However, in the end, the benefit turned out to be a quasi-benefit," said A. Mkrtchyan.
The CEO of the “Network of Last Minute Tour Stores” Sergey Agafonov also noted that he does not see a future for companies like Polar Tour.
"I think that such companies have no prospects at all, this model has always seemed ineffective to me. They resold the tour operator product to agents - and they bought it, because it was 1-2% more profitable. We did not work with them," he said.
On Thursday, tour operator Polar Tour announced that it would not be able to fulfill its obligations under sub-agency agreements from June 15. The company suggested that partners, in order to resolve the issue of payment/additional payment for applications booked for departures with a tour start date from June 15 onwards, contact the tour operator for information on the possibility of direct payment.
As before reported I. Tyurin, the portal “Interfax-Tourism”, mainly small agencies cooperated with Polar Tour, most often consisting of one person working from home. They could not go to large tour operators, since they did not meet their requirements, and booked tours through an intermediary. Polar Tour itself was an agency, its legal entity was included in the register of agencies posted on the “Turpomoshch” website. At the same time, it acted as an intermediary between other agencies and tour operators.
She added that due to the suspension of Polar Tour's activities, no one would have to be taken out of the country, since if Polar had not transferred the full money for the tour to the tour operator, the latter would not have sent the tourist anywhere. However, large tour operators there are about two thousand partially paid and unpaid applications from legal entities of the Polar Tour group of companies: tourists can make an additional payment and go on vacation or get their money back.
Source: tourism.interfax.ru