When traveling independently, you will only fail to save money in one case – if you have chosen a mass beach destination: Turkey, Egypt, or Thailand. 'A package tour is formed based on the price of a block seat on a plane, a package price for a standard hotel room, and transfer. This is justified if the tourist is going to a beach resort where charter flights operate regularly,' says Elena Borisova, commercial director of the travel project DaTravel.com.
The same applies to last-minute deals. Travel agencies achieve lower prices on these routes through charter flights and hotel discounts. In all other cases, savings can range from 20 to 40 percent of the total cost.
ROAD
The first problem a person faces when deciding to travel independently is the question of 'how to get there.' When purchasing a ready-made tour, the tour operator takes care of all logistics issues. To help the individual traveler, there are dozens of flight meta-search engines that find the best deals for a given destination. These services allow searching across multiple dates at once, thus enabling the traveler to choose the cheapest tickets.
'You can buy tickets from a tour operator cheaper than from an airline, but here the tourist risks ending up in the situation that recently occurred with 'Labyrinth'. The airline canceled flights, did not receive money (from the tour operator – editor's note by Lenta.ru), no one will evacuate the clients – they are left to their own devices,' says Vyacheslav Samokhvalov, director of marketing and advertising at travel agency 'Global-Travel'.
Another matter is the trip from the airport to the hotel. Tickets for these routes are most often purchased on the spot, and this requires at least a minimal knowledge of the language of the country the tourist is going to, or at least English. Moreover, there is a possibility that if arriving at night, there will be no public transport and you will have to either sleep at the airport or get to your accommodation by hitchhiking.
'The same applies to travel within a country or city. Here too, the traveler will need at least basic English, but trips on public transport will be significantly cheaper than organized transfers. For example, a trip on a tour operator's bus from Pardubice, where charters and cheap regular flights land, to Prague will cost 70 euros, while a ticket for the electric train along the same route costs four,' says Elena Borisova.
Another option: reduce travel costs, and more importantly, make it an interesting part of the journey – go to your destination by bicycle or hitchhiking. In these cases, the journey itself may be remembered even more than the final destination. Additionally, you can try to find a travel companion. The site Bla Bla Car allows you to do this. For example, on September 8, you can go by car to Sardinia (Italy) for six thousand rubles, the cheapest flight on that date will cost about 11 thousand. Or to Riga for 1,600 rubles instead of six.
VISA AND INSURANCE
'Visas can now be easily and simply obtained through accredited visa centers in any major Russian city without intermediaries,' says Elnar Mansurov, head of the site about independent tourism and budget travel Mishka.Travel. According to Mansurov, this has become one of the decisive factors in the popularity of independent travel. Information about what documents are needed for a visa can usually be easily found on the consulates' websites.
As for health insurance, tour operators often insure their clients under the cheapest programs. The standard price per day of vacation is one euro, while insurers have lower prices. Moreover, when buying insurance independently, it is possible to include additional options, such as insurance for flight delays or lost luggage. Obtaining health insurance from large companies takes just a few minutes, and some even offer the service of issuing a policy online.
ACCOMMODATION
When choosing independent travel, a person has a huge number of accommodation options: you can stay in a hostel if comfort is not important, or, conversely, rent a presidential suite.
You can rent an apartment or entire home directly from the owner. Such services are provided, for example, by Airbnb, which has a huge number of property rental listings, ranging from vans in the Netherlands to houses on the water somewhere in Brazil. The service acts as an intermediary between the landlord and the traveler. For a small commission, the service guarantees that the traveler will get exactly what they saw online: the site transfers money to the landlord only a few days after the tourist leaves the accommodation.
Accommodation costs, as well as travel expenses, can be completely eliminated from the trip budget if you join the couchsurfing community. Couchsurfers are people who agree to host travelers for free. In return, they themselves can stay with other couchsurfers during their travels. Launched in 2004 thanks to a handful of enthusiasts, today the portal Couchsurfing.org unites more than 9 million people from 120 thousand cities around the world.
TRENDS
The share of online bookings in Eastern Europe was 23 percent of the total tourism market in 2013, according to data from the research center PhoCusWright. Two years earlier, this figure was just over 13 percent. According to Krassi Simonski, the company's lead analyst, the independent travel industry in Eastern Europe is developing very dynamically and is the most promising. The driver of the entire region last year was Russia, which accounts for 38 percent of the entire market. PhoCusWright's report shows that the total volume of online bookings is growing year after year. In 2013, out of $95.2 billion spent on travel in Eastern Europe, $21 billion came from online bookings.
“Earlier, tourists had a fear of travel due to language problems or lack of experience in independent travel. The fear has disappeared over time thanks to the development of the internet in the country, the emergence of Russian versions of major booking systems for hotels, apartments, airfare metasearch engines, as well as their Russian-language competitors. At the same time, the internet will not completely replace travel agencies in our country: if an American can buy a package tour or cruise online, then a Russian needs to communicate personally with a manager,” shares his observations Elnar Mansurov.
According to Elena Borisova from DaTravel.com, the number of orders is growing faster than the number of independent travelers. According to the service’s employees, this is due to the fact that having once tried to arrange their own vacation, a person is unlikely to turn to tour operators in the future. “If a client once tried to put together their own trip, choosing a neighborhood not ‘trampled’ by tourists or a non-standard room, but an apartment with a kitchen or a family room with two bedrooms, then a travel agent is no longer of interest to them. They are surrounded not by a tired waiter and animator, but by a cheerful oyster seller at the market, a family of friendly Dutch people who will suggest where to go and where to take a photo for memory,” says Borisova.
Echoing her is Vyacheslav Samokhvalov from Global-Travel: “The number of Russians preferring package tourism is growing due to those people who have not yet traveled abroad. On the other hand, the number of those who organize independent trips is also growing. As a rule, these are people who have already traveled around the world, have multi-entry visas, and can, for example, spend a weekend in some European city simply by buying a plane ticket and choosing a hotel they like upon arrival or by booking via the internet.”
“There is indeed a threat to tour operators from online booking services. The number of independent tourists is growing, this is a global trend, and Russia is no exception, although these processes are slower here than in the West. There, unlike in our country, low-cost airlines are common, which allow independent travelers to save money. At the same time, demand for package tours is stable; we increase volumes in our key destinations every year. Of course, the economic and political situation this year has led to a decline in the popularity of European destinations by an average of 25 percent. At the same time, demand for tours to Turkey and Egypt grew by a quarter,” says the head of the public relations department of the travel company TUI Russia, Olga Malikova.
At the same time, all interviewees of Lenta.ru note that most often the resorts for which people buy package tours do not overlap with the destinations chosen by independent travelers. Someone who wants to laze in the sun for a week or two somewhere on the beach in Sharm el-Sheikh is unlikely to decide to think through the logistics of their trip on their own. And someone who decided to arrange their vacation independently would not think of not leaving the beach for a week – too much time and effort was invested in organizing the trip.
Timur YUSUPOV.
Лента.Ру