‘The introduction of greater financial guarantees might squeeze a number of tour operators out of the market,’ ORANGE tur’s Tourism Director Svetlana Stolyarova said to UrBC.

In the meantime, a number of insurance companies feel the current scale of tour operators’ financial security guaranteed by the existing legislation is not enough to make up for the consequences of their possible bankruptcies. These insurers say the back-up sum has to be more impressive.

‘I feel we need to work with the existing legislation for three years at least before introducing any changes. Detour was faced with the impossibility of satisfying all the claims laid against them due to insufficient volume of their financial guarantees. This is more or less the very first time a tour operator has come across such a problem, and it’s a bit early yet to make any far-reaching conclusions. It is possible that after the back-up sum has been raised to 50 million RUR, some new problems will arise that this amount of money won’t be enough to make up for. It would probably make sense if the scale of a tour operator’s financial security was directly connected to their turnover; there are, after all, companies that serve 50,000 travelers a year and companies with million-people turnovers. The risk level will definitely be different in these cases,’ Svetlana Stolyarova noted.