Tour operators continue to announce the optimization of their flight programs. Following Natalie Tours, which cancelled a number of its programs from June 30, the St. Petersburg tour operator Aurora BG also cancelled its charter chains to Bulgaria and Montenegro, ATOR reports.
Tour operator On June 30, Aurora BG announced in an official letter to its retail partners that it would “suspend” its summer charter flights to Bulgaria and Montenegro starting from July 2, 2018.
The company explains its decision on Bulgaria by “a significant change in the cost of charter flights to Bulgaria, which led to low financial performance on this route.”
The tour operator's message does not provide reasons for the cancellation of the Montenegro program.
The company assures its partners that the tour operator will evacuate its tourists who are currently abroad and will fulfill all its obligations under all its programs, which provide for the organization of children's recreation in health camps in Bulgaria, Montenegro and Turkey.
Let us recall that previously, Aurora BG was an asset of the tour operator company Matryoshka-Tour, which ceased operations a week ago and sold it in March of this year to make compensation.
At that time, Aurora BG itself explained to Vestnik ATOR that the new owner and founder of the company was “a foreign company that appointed its authorized representative as CEO.” The company was renamed Aurora Without Borders, and the list of countries it operates tours to included Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Malta, Italy, Spain, France, Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. In the fall and winter, Aurora BG intended to enter the markets of Southeast Asia and Oceania, as well as the Middle East and Africa.
However, the extremely difficult season of 2018 forced the company to cancel even its summer charter programs. Analysts believe that this is not the last event of this kind on the market that we will see this season - the main thing is that the tour operator, faced with the need to reduce its programs, correctly calculates the optimization itself and clearly describes the procedure for tourists and agents.
The difficulties of the season are obvious: tourist activity in May and June was quite low, many market participants admit: a whole combination of factors played a role - from the clear prevalence of Turkey on the market (and, accordingly, the weakening of demand in other directions) to the April “currency jump”, which significantly slowed down the sales of tour packages.
In such conditions, experts believe that only financially stable large and medium tour operator companies with developed networks of retail partners will be able to avoid optimizing their programs. The absolute majority of such companies on the market are members of the Association of Tour Operators (ATOR).
Source: trn-news.ru
