Ambotis Holidays (Ambotis Tours till 2015) is a tour operator working on the Russian market since 1996. The company is a part of a Greek Holding Ambotis Group which offer services in hotel business, incoming, etc. Recently, Ambotis Holidays has central office in Moscow, as well as offices in Saint-Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan, Samara, and Ulyanovsk. Previously, Ambotis Holidays was knows as tour operator for Greece, now it works on many destinations, like Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Maldives, Sri-Lanka, Tanzania, UAE, Vietnam, Mexico, etc. /information is translated from the official web site of the tour operator/.
Established in Year: 1996
Size of the company: about 47 employees
Expert Comment: Founded by the Greek DMC Ambotis Tours and Services, as the sales point mostly for individual and VIP clients generally for Greek Halkidiki, till 2014, Ambotis Holidays worked more as travel agency than a tour operator. When in summer 2014 the Ambotis in Greece suddenly lost all major Russian tour operators after their bankruptcy (Labirint, South Cross, Versa, Neva, Solvex), they decided to grow up their own operator in Russia instead of seeking for other partners and hired Konstantin Gorin, the previous director of commerce of Labirint with more than 15-year experience of operating on different mass tourism destinations.
Already, in winter season 2014-2015, Ambotis Holidays started operation on Sri-Lanka and Arabic Emirates as new destinations with blocks of seats. In 2015, Ambotis Holidays added more destinations, mostly exotic and FIT. So, in two years they have expanded from one (Greece) to 16 destinations. Almost on all destinations, they try to keep average rates, without any damping. The main destination is still Greece, where they offer both exclusive hotels mostly on Halkidiki (including their own, Elinotel and Xenios) and other popular hotels. Ambotis Holidays has good partnership with Utair Airlines, which guarantees them good rates for charter flights, but also cooperates with many regular airlines. In 2016, they started their own project of club animation, Elephant Holiday Clubs, a copy of popular Club SALUT! created by Labirint.
In the last two years, their marketing is very active, but not aggressive - instead of spending big money for PR and media advertisement, they prefer to invest in travel agency relationship, organising sales calls, seminars and webinars. Commission policy is rather standard for the market. Ambotis has close cooperation with sletat.ru
Recently, Ambotis Holidays is considered as middle-size tour operator on the Russian market. About 50% of all employees came from bankrupted Labirint, especially for top positions, like in Transportation, Sales, and Analytics Departments.
