Czech MFA declared war upon Russian travel market
The Czech Ministry of
Foreign Affairs launched an unprecedented move denying Russian tour operators
accreditation. It will be stressed that the Czech Embassy and the Consulate are
not to be blamed of as it was exactly the Czech’s MFA to cause it. Last week it
was announced that seven tour operators were denied the accreditation, but it
turned out to be worth: the unpleasant news affected tour operators in
Of course it’s up to
the Embassy to decide if a tour operator should be denied the accreditation.
But there should be strong indications as well. We don’t know whether they
exist or not. The tour operators were denied accreditation without assigning
any reasons, without claims, without pointing at any mistakes and basically
without giving any comments. Therefore for two years! The Heads of the
companies, who decided to find out what was the reason for sanctions, got a
rather diplomatic answer from the Consular of Czech David Nova: the Consulate
has no issues with the tour operators; we just execute the order of MFA.
Only one tour operator
got a strange explanation about its attempt to obtain accreditation in both
The situation is
unprecedented. Russian tour business has never faced such attitude before.
Well, as soon as the
information got leaked to the press, the Czechs walked back and retrieved the
accreditation to several companies. But not all the companies retrieved the
accreditation and it was brought as a great honor. Anyway, the lucky ones were
left a bad taste in their mouths.
All the leading tour
operators are nervous as they’re afraid of further unexplained sanctions. It’s
important that most of the companies have their own receiving companies in
The
There’s a merit of
Russian tour operators as well: they invest in promoting the
It’s not the first
time the
RUTI has already
forwarded letters to the Czech’s Prime Minister Peter Nechas strongly
requesting to pay attention to the Russian tour operators’ mass accreditation
denial, help to clear the grounds and resolve the problem.