Russian Tourism Agency and Aerofuels group of companies signed an agreement to provide discounts on fuel for Russian air carriers flying within the country, the Federal Tourism Agency website said on Friday. Memorandum of cooperation was signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Some foreign airlines are about to leave the Russian market under the current conditions of reduction in demand for international transportation, and some airlines reduce the flight programs, the deputy head of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation Valery Okulov said on transportation forum in Novosibirsk on Wednesday.

Audit commission of Tourpomosch (association of tour operators for outbound tourism) failed to establish the exact number of tourists, evacuated from abroad in 2014 after the bankrupts of tour operators , the chairman of the association Natalya Kitova said at a general meeting of the association committee.

Airport of Lipetsk, on Friday opened international flights, the head of administration of the Lipetsk region, Oleg Korolev, said. The first flight was operated to Italy on the route Lipetsk - Milan - Lipetsk.

Vladivostok Airport in the summer can start receiving the largest passenger aircraft in the world A380, which is planned to be operated on the route Moscow - Vladivostok by Transaero airline, as the press department of the Governor Vladimir Miklushevsky reported. Airbus A380 is the largest aircraft of Airbus SAS Group and the largest passenger aircraft in the world.

The Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the Ministry of Finance to maintain a zero rate of VAT on domestic air transportation of passengers to/from the Crimea and Sevastopol, the site of the Russian government says. "Russian Ministry of Finance has to preserve tax rate of 0% for value added tax in the implementation of services for domestic air transport of passengers and luggage, if the point of departure or arrival is situated in the territory of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol," the order of the Prime Minister said.

In January-March 2015, passenger traffic on international charter flights from Moscow's airports decreased by half compared with the same period last year, from 1.2 million passengers to 652.4 thousand, the statement on the website of the Russian Aviation Ministry says. As press secretary of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Irina Tyurina reported, most airlines cooperating with leading tour operators note significant reduction of passenger traffic.

At the beginning of May, the list of members of the association of outgoing Russian tour operators Tourpomosch has just 861 company, while last year at this same time, members of the association were more than two thousand travel companies, which is almost 2.5 times higher. Accordingly, the compensation fund reduced. Now it has in amount about 180 million rubles, of which almost 90 million were on deposit from the previous year.

During May holidays, Moscow airports have increased the number of passengers compared to the same period of the last year by 4.1%, according to the Federal Air Transport Agency website. According to the report, from May 1 till May 4, airports of Moscow served 845.3 thousand passengers against 811.9 thousand people a year earlier.

Mobile Telesystems (MTS), one of the three biggest mobile operators in Russia, has started selling tickets for trains and planes in its own retail stores. Online retailer Ozon, about 11% of which belongs to MTS, became the partner of MTS in this project. Customers can buy tickets at retail stores of MTS without an extra charge, the representative of MTS Dmitry Solodovnikov said.

From May 1, Russian tourists will again pay for a visa to Egypt, but it will not have a noticeable effect on the tourist flow, as the press secretary of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Irina Tyurina reported. "The Ministry of Tourism of Egypt informed in advance that Russians do nit pay the visa fee only until 30-th of April.

Specialized tour operator who will organize tours within Russia for disabled travelers, is established with the support of the Federal Tourism Agency, the Head of the Federal Tourism Agency Oleg Safonov said. Tour operator Dostypny Tour (Affordable Tour), whose founder is the non-profit organization International Academy of Accessibility and Universal Design", has already been included in the Federal Registry of Tour Operators.

Inflation in Russia upon the results of 2015 might be 6.7% given the current rates of the weekly price growth, Russia’s Central Bank President Elvira Nabiullina told reporters on Thursday. "We alongside others are looking at the annualised inflation that is the inflation expected during the whole year if each week the inflation remained at the level of the current week [0.1% - eds. TASS]. Now the inflation stands at 6.7%," Nabiullina said adding that In January the inflation climbed to 40% and in March - to 15%.

As many as 900,000 Russians visited Italy in 2014 to spend one billion US dollars there, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday after talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Putin noted that cross years of tourism had been a success in both countries.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the fall of Russia's GDP in 2015 to 3.8%, the fund said in a new analytical forecast report on Tuesday. Earlier, the IMF predicted that Russia's GDP this year will fall by 3%. According to the new forecast of the fund, in 2016 the economic downturn in Russia will be 1.1%, while earlier the forecast was at 1%.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was named the winner of US magazine Time 100 readers’ poll for this year’s most influential people. The South Korean girl-group 2NE1 known as CL came second in the ranking with 6.9% of the votes. US President Barack Obama was ranked 11th. According to Time magazine, more than 57% of the votes were cast in the United States, 5.54% in Canada and another 4.55% in the United Kingdom. 

The executive Director of the Association of Tour Operators (ATOR) of Russia Maya Lomidze reported about that to TASS. Low-cost airline of Aeroflot, Pobeda Airline, organizes regular flights to Sochi, which reduces cost of tour packages to Sochi. Tour operators also actively work on that destination without any interferer from city government. Taking into account such activity, we cannot exclude the possibility of dumping prices from tour operators”, Lomidze said.

In the beginning of April, Tour Operators Association in Outbound Tourism Tourpomosch (click to read more about the Association) reminded tour operators that they according to the law they have to pay the membership fee till April 15, 2015 to extend their membership in the association. Within remaining two weeks, tour operators who are planning to operate in the field of outbound tourism, should pay the fee to compensation fund of Tourpomosch in the amount of 0.1% of the funds received from the sale of tourism products according to the financial statements at the end of 2014, but not less than 100 thousand rubles .

The Russian authorities might decide to create an additional incentive for travel agents to encourage them selling more tours to Russian resorts. As TourDom learned from some sources, it is planned to award with cars those travel agents who would send the maximum number of tourists to Krasnodar region and the Crimea.

An average price for summer tour package to foreign destinations for Russians fell down by 15 – 20 per cent. Interfax informed about that as referred to data from tour operators. Such trend is a result of price drop on some key destinations, cut of expenses for holidays, and dependence of many foreign resorts on Russian travelers.

From April 1, 2015, Russian Tour Operator Natalie Tours closes its offices in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. According to Words of Vladimir Vorobiev, the President of Natalie Tours, the main reason is that tour operator refused from flights from Siberia for this summer season. “But we consider the possibilities to have flight programs from Siberia for winter season,” Vladimir Vorobiev says.

On the last week, Rostourism (Federal Agency for Tourism) read out of Federal Registry at once 370 tour operators. The order was published on the web site of Ministry on 16-th of March, however travel industry was busy with tourism fairs in Moscow, MITT and Intourmarket. Recently, there are 3 849 companies in the registry.

By request of Kommersant, Internet Analytics Company com.Score scaled the audience of top ten travel online services in Russia (they counted only web sites’ visitors above 15 y.o.). Both online travel agencies and meta-engines, as well as info resources were taken into account.  In January 2015, the common audience of these web sites totals 20.7 billion visitors, which is by 6.4 billion people less, than in January 2014 (23.6 per cent down).

The company report for 2014 stated that losses are determined by so cold paper corrections, without them net profit of Aeroflot totaled more than 10.8 billion rubles. As of year-end 2014, revenue of Aeroflot Group exceeded 319 billion rubles which is 9.9 per cent more than a year before. In addition, the revenue of regular traffic increased for 10 per cent and amounted more than 253.6 billion rubles.  

In the number of delayed flights in February, VIM AVIA airline is number one among Russian air companies. 54 flights, or 9.36%, were delayed in total by VIM AVIA according to the data published on Russian Aviation website.  The next in that list is IrAero with 57 delayed flights of 617 (9.24%), followed by Saratov Airlines with 27 delayed flights of 336 (8.04%).