Crimea missed a third of tourists for the May holidays
Simferopol, May 21 (Navigator, Astra Yazyka) – During the May holidays, Crimea lost 30% of the tourist flow compared to last year’s load for the same period. The Kerch crossing failed, where they began to restore order after May Day.
As a Navigator correspondent reports, the results of the May holidays for the tourism sector were presented at a press conference by the Minister of Resorts of Crimea, Elena Yurchenko.
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According to her information, in the period from May 1 to May 17, 130 thousand people visited Crimea, which is less than last year, when the peninsula’s tourism sector received 176,4 thousand people during the May holidays.
“I can’t say that this makes us happy, but we are on the right course,” the minister is confident.
According to her assessment, the most pressing issue remains the issue of transport accessibility of Crimea. In second place among the problems, Yurchenko named the banking system, which is just being established in the republic.
The minister personally inspected the work of the Crimea-Kuban ferry during the peak load period before May Day and after Victory Day.
“I talked with tourists who arrived on the peninsula and were transported back after some time,” Yurchenko said.
Before the May holidays, according to the minister, the waiting period for a ferry from the port of Kavkaz to the port of Crimea averaged from 4 to 8 hours or more.
“Of course, tourists arriving from the mainland did not respond with great joy, but on the whole they treated the situation with understanding,” the minister said.
Monitoring of the reverse flow on May 10, according to Yurchenko, showed that the waiting period in line for the ferry was reduced to 3 hours, thanks to the technical regulations for the passage of passenger transport and the transfer of freight to the Novorossiysk - Feodosia line. The minister presented her reviews of the vacation with the impressions of one of the residents of Nizhny Novgorod, who was in Crimea, Feodosia, with her family for the first time.
“After waiting 16 hours in line for the ferry, she decided to never come to Crimea again. But after 10 days of rest, visiting the sights of only Eastern Crimea, they booked rooms for July,” Yurchenko emphasized.
She said that on May 21 a meeting would be held in Moscow, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, at which the main issue would be the further resolution of transport issues with Crimea.
Let us remind you that before the May holidays, the queue for the Kerch crossing from the Kavkaz port stretched for 10 km. The waiting period, according to car travelers, ranged from 8 to 24 hours. People blocked the oncoming lane to prevent those who wanted to jump in line from passing. Only cars of families with small children were allowed forward.
The separation of freight and passenger transport flows took place on May 1. In order to visually reduce the queue of cars, transport owners were asked to drive their cars onto a train ferry and then cross the passenger ferry in 20 minutes.
As a result, already in the port of Kerch, tourists waited for 6-8 hours for the arrival of their cars. Moreover, the crossing infrastructure is not designed for a long stay of a large number of people.
On the way back, the waiting period has indeed been reduced, but not to 3 hours, as the minister claims, but to 6. Moreover, the procedure for moving to the opposite bank again separated cars and passengers. As a result, on the night of May 10, in the port of Kavkaz, tourists, numb while waiting for their cars, started a real riot and blocked the crossing gates. After communicating with the police and port administration, a railway ferry delivered the cars from the port of Kerch.
Crimea lost a third of its tourists during the May holidays.