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Budget Deal Offers London for 50 Euros EasyJet, one of Europe's few budget airlines, launched daily flights to Talinn from Berlin and London at the beginning of the week. The new routes are expected to raise the number of travelers to Russia as well as Estonia, with an eight-hour bus trip linking Talinn to St. Petersburg.
Airline tickets from London's Stanstead airport to Talinn start at 35 euros (including the 16-euros tax) one way; it's 21 euros from Berlin. The next link are Eurolines buses, departing from Talinn's central bus station to St. Petersburg five times daily at 15 euros a trip.
Overall, the journey will take up to 12 hours to complete, but total one quarter of the cost of the cheapest direct flight to the city. The question is, will the saving boost independent travel between Russia and Europe?
"About 47,000 British tourists visited Russian in 2003, according to Moscow's information office," said Dimitry Paranyushkin, editor of waytorussia.net. "At the same time, there're a few million independent travelers in the UK who would like to go to Russia, but don't want to pay 400 euros for the tickets. Once the travelers learn about [the offer], I reckon the number of travelers will double," said Paranyushkin.
"There are an estimated 1.7 million backpacker travelers from the United States and Western Europe, whose interest in the Baltic states and Russia would be promoted by the offers," he said.
Low budget airlines have started to recognize the business potential in Eastern Europe since ten accession countries joined the EU earlier this year. Both EasyJet and another budget airline, Ryanair, will also launch flights to Latvia at the end of the month. Ryanair will operate flights to Riga from London starting at 50 euros, while EasyJet said it will launch a Berlin-Riga route, with 21 euros for a ticket.
The expansion of low-cost airlines may continue in Eastern Europe, but it's unlike to encompass Russia directly, said the president of Sindbad, a city-based travel agency, Steven Caron. "The [airline's] cost of flying into Russia is more prohibitive. No [budget airlines] will be coming into Pulkovo anytime soon."
Furthermore, Caron did not think the new routes will cause an explosion in the number of travelers going to and from Russia.
"Such a trip may appeal to backpackers, who are not constricted by particular time frames, but it's out of the question for business travelers," said Caron. Traveling through Estonia will also be problematic for Russian citizens, who will be required to obtain a paperwork-heavy Estonian transit visa.
Of the emerging new routes, Riga will prove most interesting for Russians, said Paranyushkin: "Obtaining the [Latvian] transit visa takes only a day, after which Russian tourists have cheap access to major European cities.".
Until Estonia's addition to EasyJet's network, cheap tariffs between Russia and Europe could only be accessible from Finland's Tampere, from where Ryanair operates flights to London, Frankfurt and Riga.
City travel agencies said they are not afraid of losing business to budget airlines who retail tickets mainly via the Internet.
"There stands the question of actually having a credit card to book the ticket, and they are still not widespread in Russia," said Liana Arutyunian, the head of Infinity travel St. Petersburg.
Apart from the public's cautious attitude towards passing on financial details over the Internet in order to buy things, Arutyunian saw the offers as rather impractical for Infinity's clientele: "Budget airlines usually fly at inconvenient times and to far-removed airports. Our clientele are mostly corporate travelers, who value service and convenience."
St. Petersburg-based carrier Pulkovo offers some of the cheapest direct flights from the city to London. Besides offering $300 (before tax) round-trip deals, the airline also has year-round special tariffs for students under an agreement with UNESCO, said Pulkovo's public relations manager Alexandra Cherkasova, although the tariffs cannot be disclosed.
"Some of the advantages of our London flights are flexible tariffs, convenient departure times and high service quality," said Cherkasova.
While admitting that the corporate clients will always choose the quickest, if not the cheapest route, Paranyushkin reminds the larger domestic operators the value of the independent traveler market.
Domestic operators may soon see, predicted Paranyushkin, that given a chance to save on price, service will not play such an important role for travelers choosing their cross-European means of transport.
Germanwings, a German budget airline with ticket prices comparable to those of EasyJet, is planing to start operating flights to Russia in the summer 2005, he said, with EasyJet and Ryanair following in its footsteps. If domestic airlines remain skeptical and inactive, they may well lose large sections of the independent traveler market to the budget operators.
Скажу честно - взял тут:
http://sptimes.ru/ar...ews/b_14071.htm
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