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Buses Stuck at the Embassy
The Russian Union of Travel Industry sent a letter to the Russian Foreign Ministry yesterday asking it exert influence on the French embassy in Moscow, which has stopped issuing visas to Russian tourists who buy New Years bus tours of the country. The tour operators suspect that there is a discriminatory policy in place against Russians the French suspect of wanting to emigrate illegally to France. The embassy says that it simply cannot keep up with the large volume of documents. It has not announced when it will resume issuing visas.
The French embassy announced yesterday that it would no longer accept visa applications from Russians who have purchased New Years bus tours. Russian Union of Tourist Industry press secretary Irina Tyurina says, however, that it told tour operators on Monday that it could not handle the “storm of documents. On that day, it had a backlog of 4000 applications for bus tours. On Tuesday, according to Tyurina, the embassy stopped taking visa applications from other types of travelers as well. She said that about 1000 people who bought tickets for tours have thus been stranded at home.
The French embassy is one of the more problematic embassies in the country. Visa applicants there commonly complain about a lack of courtesy on the part of consular workers. “Russian travelers are suspected of wanting to emigrate illegally,” Tyurina said, “especially those who prefer bus tours. Bus tours are cheaper and the French think that the tourist is just thinking about how he can get to France and run off.” Dmitry Fomintsev, head of Tourtrans Voyage, which specializes in bus tours, pointed out to Kommersant that school children make up the bulk on bus tours. “We have a group of schoolchildren from Tyumen who won trips to France in a local contest, for example. It turns out that those who fly to Courchevel in private planes are better than schoolchildren in the eyes of the French embassy!” he exclaimed.
“Bus tour” is something of a misnomer in the Russian case. Tourists to France usually travel to Berlin or Brest by train and board busses there. The cost of such tours ranges from ˆ700 to ˆ1000, which is comparable to air travel. The tour operators stand to lose the most from the embassy's actions. “A conscientious company should return the client the full cost of the tour, if it cannot provide it,” Fomintsev said. “But rooms in French hotels in this season are booked in advance and the hotels impose a fine of 30 percent of the cost of the room on tour agencies for cancellations.”
The French embassy stated in an official communiqué that “the consulate will consider new applications for bus tours in the near future, as soon as it has processed all applications that have accumulated until now.”
www.commersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 14, 2006
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