Travel companies and hotel owners have offered to resume tourist trips to Russian cities on June 1. This will only affect those cities where there is a small number of cases of coronavirus. This was reported by the Russian Union of Travel Industry (PCT). Andrey Ignatiev, President of the PCT, and Gennady Lamshin, President of the Russian Hotel Association (RGA), sent a letter with this idea to Zarina Doguzova, the head of Rostourism, and Maxim Reshetnikov, who is the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.
The PCT reports that it, together with the RGA, wants to open long-distance travel in Russia on June 1. The epidemiological situation in the regions will be taken into account.
On July 1, it is proposed to allow flights between different states, which also have a low incidence of COVID-19. As the situation in the world improves, the list of countries available for travel will expand. The authors of the letter believe that the full opening of the borders will not come until January 1, 2021.
In addition, employees of travel companies insist on deferring payments until April 1, 2021. Due to the current global situation, they are unable to make payments under contracts with insurance companies. In addition, there are now risks for entrepreneurship. Insurance services are also reluctant to sign contracts with tourism operators.
For these reasons, Andrey Ignatiev proposes to reduce the maximum size of the personal liability fund of travel operators from 7% to 3% of the total price of a tourist product for the previous year.
Due to the current volume of funds, operators, mostly large ones, are forced to withdraw several hundred million rubles from circulation every year. These funds are allowed to be used only when they have to leave the tourism market.
Tax and subsidy proposals
In addition, there was a proposal not to postpone tax payments, but to arrange a kind of vacation for travel companies. It is assumed that they will not have to pay taxes to various funds until March 2021.
The tourism operators themselves want them to be able to provide subsidies not when they accept foreign nationals, but in advance. In this case, they must report in December-January.
The latest proposal was to change the VAT rates for collective accommodation facilities. In 2021, they want to reduce it to 5%, and in 2021 - to increase it to 10%.
