The authorities of
Krasnodar Region's main resort report an increase in the inbound tourist flow.
According to the data of Health Resort Business and Tourism Department of
Sochi, the number of the city's guests grew by 1.3% since the beginning of this
year compared to the same period of 2011. During the period from January till
June 2012 1.3 million people have come to Sochi.
The interest towards the resort is being confirmed by online hotel booking
systems' statistics. As per the reports of one of them - oktogo.ru - the resort
holds to the top 3 destinations. However the tour operators believe that the
flow of visitors to Sochi
is mostly made up by not tourists but construction workers, constructing the
infrastructure for the 2014 Olympics.
Most of the experts
interviewed by RATA-news agree on one thing: the demand for Sochi among travel agents' customers remained
at the previous years' level or even went down. "This summer the sales of
tours to Sochi
grew up by just 1% - likely just a statistical error. Adler, that found itself
in the epicenter of the Olympic "blast", lose 6% of its last years'
tourists. Only Lazarevsky District, that lies far from the construction sites,
showed an increase of 3%" - tells Mr. Sergey Romashkin, the Director
General of Dolphin Company.
In his opinion, the
positive statistics of local officials and booking engines can be easily
explained by the fact that a great part of Sochi's accommodation facilities has been
given off to the construction workers employed at the resort's countless
Olympic sites. "In this respect, the occupancy rate of Sochi's hotels and guest houses hasn't
changed, while the number of holidaymakers is going down. I believe that the
closer the Games are, the more notable this disproportion will be" -
clarifies Mr. Romashkin.
