Turkey rejects Nato sanctions with new airline for Russian tourists and £240m in loans to travel firms

Western tourists are being urged to boycott Turkish Airlines over its move to add more than 300 flights a week from Russia

Turkey’s government and airlines are to hand Russian tour operators £240m in loans to ensure that Russian tourists can still holiday in the country this year – in defiance of bans on its airlines entering many Western countries’ airspace following the invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey has announced plans to encourage as many Russian holidaymakers as possible to visit, hoping to lure those who can still afford to travel following the nation’s economic crash with special direct flights from regional airports across Russia.

The Turkish government will launch a charter carrier based out of Antalya airport offering a million seats this year, while Turkish Airlines and Pegasus Airlines are also offering a combined two million seats on direct flights from Russia to Turkey.

The three million scheduled seats announced on Turkish services will still be well below the seven million Russian visitors predicted to arrive in 2022 by Turkey’s government before war broke out.

Resorts in Antalya popular with Russian visitors are already feeling the loss of their custom, with hotels in the resort towns of Kemer and Side pushing back opening dates by months to May and June.

Russians had been expected to be stuck within their own borders as Western sanctions hit their finances, and travel routes to most of Europe and North America were curtailed.

However, Turkey’s efforts prove that while Russians might not be enjoying gelato on the beaches of Italy this summer, its citizens will still be welcome in much of the world. Wealthy Russians continue to travel to destinations such as the Gulf states and the Caribbean, with Aeroflot announcing a new route to the Maldives last month.

The campaign group Boycott Russia is asking Westerners to avoid flying with Turkish Airlines due to its plan to add more than 300 flights a week from Russia. “If you have a choice, choose an alternative operator for your flights,” the group said on Twitter.

There are also concerns that Turkey’s efforts to lure Russian tourists could backfire, with possible tensions between Western Europeans or Ukrainians and Russians over the war .

Tour operators such as TUI and Jet2 are still selling Britons holidays to Russian-majority resorts, including Kemer. And as they often contract only a certain number of rooms directly from hoteliers, UK operators have no control over who else might stay there at the same time.

Two Russian men were questioned by police in Spain earlier this month after a Ukrainian business owner was beaten by a gang of men in his own bar in Torrevieja, Alicante, on 10 April. The victim, 43, was reportedly repeatedly kicked and punched, and suffered a broken nose after telling the group he was Ukrainian.

Across Europe there have been reports of increased anti-Russian sentiment. Last week, a group of Latvian tourists posted a disturbing video on social media showing fellow diners at a hotel harassing them after mistaking the group of eight for Russian nationals. In the video, a woman is seen telling off diners at a table for “going on vacation” while Ukraine was at war. “Are you deaf?” a man replied. “We are not from Russia.”

According to data from the Economist Intelligence Unit, Turkey and Poland will suffer the biggest fall in Ukrainian and Russian visitor numbers in absolute terms. However, Cyprus and Latvia will be hit hardest. In 2019, Russians accounted for 20 per cent, 29 per cent, and 36 per cent of all tourists visiting Cyprus, Montenegro and Latvia respectively.

While Turkey bets on keeping the tourist roubles flowing, other countries reliant on Russian and Ukrainian visitor spending are adapting quickly.

Cyprus, which had expected more than one million Russian visitors this year, was quick to ban all Russian flights following Russia’s invasion. Transport minister Yiannis Karousos said that the island nation hoped to minimise the impact that the ban will have on the economy by increasing tourism from other countries such as Britain.

While Russians can still visit Egypt, the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh – a popular destination with Russian tourists – has pivoted to make up the shortfall with Israeli guests, with direct flights from Ben-Gurion International Airport landing in April – a first in 40 years.

In January, Russians accounted for 17 per cent of the international arrivals in Phuket, more than any other country, data from Thailand’s ministry of tourism and sport shows.

Bill Barnett, founder of the Phuket-based hospitality consultancy C9 Hotelworks, said that a loss of Russian tourists would create permanent low season on the island, but not an all-out crisis, as Chinese visitors were the biggest spenders. He added that Russians could be easily replaced as “geographically blessed” Phuket “is within six to eight hours of a third of the world’s population”.

Many tour operators have also moved to ban Russian nationals entirely. Toronto-based G Adventures will not accept bookings from Russian travel agencies or Russian nationals as clients “for the foreseeable future”, its founder, Bruce Poon Tip, said.

With most international border restrictions ending and unprecedented demand for holidays, things were looking sunny for travel and holidays at the start of 2022. The World Travel and Tourism Council confidently predicted on 2 February that travel and tourism would contribute £6.8trn to the global economy this year, 6.4 per cent below pre-pandemic levels.

A buoyant Expedia chief executive Peter Kern had declared that summer 2022 would be the “busiest travel season ever”. Asked by Bloomberg in mid-February if anything could threaten the industry’s comeback, he confidently replied: “We’re pretty leaned in.”

Less than a week later, Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, affecting an industry still reeling from two years of pandemic shutdowns.

While the war is first and foremost a tragedy for the people of Ukraine, it has not been good news for tourism workers worldwide, nor indeed for British holidaymakers hoping to travel overseas, often for the first time in years.

The first and most striking impact on overseas travel arrived in the form of unprecedented restrictions on airlines and airspace.

Within days of the invasion, all of Russian airspace – the world’s largest – was closed to airlines from 36 western nations in retaliation for Nato-aligned nations banning the flyover or landing of Russian flights.

For middle-class Russians, travel to much of the world, including favourite destinations such as Italy, became all but impossible overnight, while the national airline Aeroflot was forced to ground almost its entire fleet.

The impact on Britons wishing to visit Europe or jetting west to the Americas or Caribbean has been relatively minor. Flight times have remained largely unaffected, and disruption has been kept to a minimum as airlines re-route around both Russia and Ukraine.

However, routes between northern Europe and north Asian destinations such as Japan and South Korea now take up to 40 per cent longer as they skirt Russian airspace.

Finnair, which operated an extensive north Asian network from Helsinki Airport, less than 100 miles from the Russian border, has been affected more than most, suffering a comparable operating loss of €133m (£111m) in the first quarter of 2022.

Speaking at the airline’s Q1 interim report on Wednesday, chief executive Topi Manner said the airline did not expect a quick resolution to the airspace flyover ban and was “adapting to the reality” with a new emphasis on routes to America and South Asia, the leasing of aircraft and crew to rival airlines such as British Airways, and cost-saving measures, including the potential sale of aircraft.

The war in Ukraine has also exacerbated rising fuel and commodity prices, both of which will hit the pockets of holidaymakers in 2022 and beyond.

European jet fuel prices increased from £544 per ton in December, when war in Ukraine seemed unlikely, to £918 per ton in March – a rise of almost 70 per cent.

Tourists are yet to notice the effect of jet fuel price increases because airlines agree to a purchase price many months in advance. However, if commodity prices stay high, as expected, then current fuel costs will eventually be passed on to consumers in the form of inflated ticket prices.

Already, river cruise firm CroisiEurope has “reluctantly” taken a decision to introduce a “small fuel surcharge” on all 2022 departures.

Loganair, the UK’s largest regional airline, became one of the first carriers to add a fuel surcharge to bookings last month, adding almost £8 per return fare from 21 March.

The cost-of-living crisis, exacerbated by the war, has hit the spending power of households in the UK and around the world, putting overseas holidays out of reach for some and keeping others closer to home.

But despite the squeeze on household expenditures, most Europeans still plan on going on holiday this spring and summer.

More from Travel

Three quarters of Europeans will take a holiday in the next six months, according to the European Travel Commission. More than half of those surveyed said they planned to visit another European country, with sun and beach trips the most popular option.

However, according to UK high street travel agents, the war is “casting doubt in customers’ minds”. Lee Hunt, owner of independent travel agent Deben Travel, told i that customers now looked to western European favourites over eastern Europe or Baltic nations bordering Russia.

He added: “Generally, if someone was to come in with a city break enquiry, we would offer to look into places such as Riga in Latvia and Krakow in Poland. But we are finding that people are asking if we can just stick to Italy, Spain, Portugal – those sorts of places – instead.”

Anecdotal evidence from agents is backed up by hotel prices, which pointed to a spike in demand for Spain and Portugal during the Easter holidays, and interest in eastern Mediterranean destinations waning, according to Mabrian Technologies.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, UK flight search traffic grew by 13 per cent for both Portugal and Spain, but fell 10 per cent for Turkey and 8 per cent for Greece, data by the travel intelligence platform showed.

It is now unclear when or if travel will ever get back to the “normal” of 2019.

Writing of G Adventures’ outright ban on Russian tourists, founder Bruce Poon Tip said that the decision broke his heart, adding: “I have always said travel can be the fastest path to peace.”

Do you have a question about travel? Email us: asktravel@inews.co.uk

Most Read By Subscribers