The head of Natalie Tours has decided to resume tour operator activities on the basis of the company Tourism Center Soglasie, the only legal entity operating under the Natalie brand that remains in the unified federal register, Interfax-Tourism reports with reference to to the press secretary of the Russian Union of Travel Industry (RUTI) Irina Tyurina.
"The company "Tourism Center Soglasie" was founded in late November 2017 and at the same time joined the unified federal register of tour operators and the association "Turpomoshch". It began operating in April under the New Travelers trademark, advertising individual tours for wealthy tourists," she said.
It was previously reported that Soglasie was the only one of the four legal entities operating under the Natalie Tours brand that was not excluded by Rostourism from the unified federal register of tour operators on September 3. According to the system "SPARK-Interfax", The founder at that time was Denis Yarov, and the CEO was Dmitry Tolstik. On September 12, the owner of the company changed — Ksenia Mostovskaya became the owner. On Thursday, she told RBC that she had previously “lived abroad and looked after her child.” According to K. Mostovskaya, the company will continue to be involved in outbound tourism, and in the first months, Vladimir Vorobyov will consult with it. The website newtravelers.ru is currently down.
Let us recall that V. Vorobyov previously stated that he plans to resume tour operator activities after October 1 and is looking for an investor. According to him, the amount of investment required to start work is 700-800 million rubles.
"As our sources in the market report, the new owner of Soglasie, Ksenia Mostovskaya, is a friend of Vladimir Vorobyov's wife, and her husband is related to a large chain of perfume and cosmetics stores. And it is assumed that Vladimir Vorobyov will manage New Travelers, and not consult at all. In other words, he will essentially start his business from scratch. It is highly doubtful that in such a difficult time for the travel business, anyone would agree to buy a travel company with huge debts and such a negative image in the market. I think that only people who wanted to help the head of Natalie Tours could do this," I. Tyurina said.
She recalled that V. Vorobyov had previously managed his own companies, without formally having any relation to them. He was listed as a co-founder of only one of the four legal entities included in the federal register of tour operators - OOO "Agentstvo Puteshestvie Natali", which served 1802 tourists in 2017.
The Interfax-Tourism portal asked Vladimir Vorobyov for a comment. He called the information about the restart of his business "another fake."
On July 4, Natalie Tours announced the cancellation of all confirmed tours until September 30 under approximately 12,000 contracts. The company's debt to tourists and partners is approximately 1.5 billion rubles, and the total number of victims is approaching 30,000. On September 3, Rostourism excluded three of the four legal entities that sold tours under the Natalie Tours brand from the unified federal register of tour operators. These are Panorama Tour LLC, NATALI Travel Agency LLC, and Natalie Tour Operator LLC.
The financial liability of each of the three companies was insured by Ingosstrakh Insurance Company for 50 million rubles. The company stated that it would pay compensation to tourists. However, the vast majority of contracts with tourists were concluded on behalf of Panorama Tour LLC. The 50 million rubles will not be enough for the clients of this company to cover the damage; the amount of payments for each tour will be about 5 thousand rubles.
Source: trn-news.ru