MFA and MTS to text tourists about emergencies
While traveling Russian tourists will learn about emergency situations from text messages. Recently Russia’s MFA and MTS (wireless service provider Mobile TeleSystems) announce the launch of a joint emergency notification system for Russians who are outside their homeland.
Starting from August 1st MTS subscribers will be able to receive real-time notifications at no charge. The messages will provide essential information in case of an emergency, including contact details of relevant organizations that can help a tourist. Besides that, every welcoming text message forwarded to any MTS subscriber upon arrival to his destination country will include phone numbers and web-addresses of Russia’s Embassy and Consulates. At the same time Russia’s diplomatic missions will know how many MTS subscribers are within the emergency area.
Tour operators agree that this new service will definitely help Russian tourists to find their way around in an unforeseen situation. However most of the interviewed key travel sector players didn’t have a chance to fully appreciate the new system. “We can only tell how efficient it is when something happens” – comments Solvex Travel.
The Head of Marketing department of Lanta-tour Voyage company Mr. Mikhail Rybakov believes that the text messages will be a great help for those tourists who don’t care about TV or Radio. “These notification definitely won’t make it worse” – he said.
Destination Manager for Japan of Varvarka Travel Company Mrs. Vera Razouvaeva points out that the notifications for tourists first of all should be reliable and shouldn’t cause havoc among the travelers. Mrs. Razouvaeva also noticed that tour operators always try to promptly inform their clients about an emergency themselves.
Similar SMS notification system was established by the Japan’s Government. During the tsunami and the earthquake in March 2011 the citizens were receiving text messages with latest updates on the situation.
According to the Press-Secretary of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Mrs. Irina Tiurina, MFA and MTS set up the right initiative, now it’s the time to efficiently implement it. “The first question that usually arises after an incident is “How many Russians are there?” It is vital to know in case of a need of an emergency evacuation, it is always of great interest to the media – says Irina Tiurina – It is very difficult to calculate the number of Russian citizens in one or another country and the capabilities of MTS are very much to the point”.
Irina Tiurina reminded that the question regarding the number of Russian tourists in one or another country immediately arises after each disaster or other incident. This February the Federation Council Commission on Youth and Tourism Affairs proposed to create a unified tourism register. This was caused by the variation of the number of Russians that were in Egypt at the time of political tension. First the experts saw this figure at 20 thousand people, later this number was adjusted and finally reached 52 thousand – quite a difference.
Those Russians who prefer to arrange their vacations by themselves and thus don’t have any support from tour operators are especially in need of current information about an incident and contact details of relevant authorities. As was told by Irina Tiurina, governments and ministries of many countries offer the citizens to register on the internet upon arrival to their holiday destination, so they can be contacted in case of emergency. This service is available for Australians, Canadians, Americans, Germans, Italians, British and South Koreans. Unfortunately there is no such resource in Russia and that makes the imitative of MFA and MTS even more important.