Greek "Le Grand" and Russian “Yuzhny Krest” have announced the severance of their relationship

         Yesterday, information was put up on the website of “Yuzhny Krest” stating that the travel agent is completely terminating their relationship with the Greek company Le Grand “in light of their incorrect business behaviour”.

 Along with this, The Russian Travel Industry Union received a letter from the president of the Greek company Le Grand Group of Companies, Fonteyn Sapunaki. The colleague from Greece informed the tour operator OOO “Yuzhny Krest” that they have a massive outstanding debt to the host company. Because of the refusal by “Yuzhny Krest” to pay out this debt in accordance with the schedule agreed upon by both companies, Le Grand believes that it is now impossible to welcome tourists who come to Greece as part of the partneship with the “Yuzhny Krest” line, and will terminate all collaboration with the company as of 11 am   30.07.2012.

As Fonteyn Spauraki pointed out, the goal of the letter was to inform the Russian Tour Industry Union about the need to undertake all necessary measures to observe the rights of citizens of the Russian Federation who arrive in Greece for their holiday, which may be violated as a result of the financial unreliability of “Yuzhny Krest”.

The Vice President of the “Yuzhny Krest” company Marina Borisovskaya, who RATA-news got in contact with regarding and explanation of the situation was surprized by the formulation of the question: “Yuzhny Krest’s partnership with Le Grand was all in all terminated in October 2011. Time to time we made bookings only in the hotel Mitsis upon demand, which can be ordered through Le Grand, but all of these requests we paid in time, even before the arrival of travellers to their destination. A month ago we deleted the prices for the Mitsis Hotel from our site altogether and stopped making bookings there”. According to the words of Ms Borisovkaya, there are only 12 requests left for Mitsis through “Yuzhny Krest” on different islands, the majority of which have already been paid for through the early booking scheme. “But because of the incorrect behaviour of Le Grand we decided not to risk the tourists calm vacation and to cancel their booking in Mitsis, - tells us Marina Borisovskaya. – Information regarding this was put up on our website yesterday. Even though these reservations had already been paid for by our company, we offered our clients to make another booking in a hotel of a higher class at our expense, or get a full refund of their holiday”.

More than that, as it turns out, the Le Grand Company itself was making bookings at the Sol Kipriotis Hotel in Kosa through “Yuzhny Krest”, and requests for this hotel continue to flow in. “At the moment we have around 26 requests from Le Grand, and they haven’t informed us of what we should do with them after the severance of our partnership since the 30th of July, and still no one has gotten in contact with us – says Marin Borisovskaya. – As a result were trying to get in contact with partners of this Greek company ourselves, to try and figure out if they were the ones who made the reservations in Sol Kipriotis, and whether or not these reservations should be cancelled”.

In Ms Borisovskaya’s opinion, any financial conflict should be resolved in court, and not with public discussion. “In any case, no matter what anyone claims, were are ready to provide letters from our current partners, the largest of which are the Fenix Company and the Aldemar chain of hotels, stating that “Yuzhny Krest” collaborates with them only on the grounds of prepayment”, - said Marina Borisovskaya.