Federal media overview

How investment and new technologies change the tourism and aviation markets: future of the Electronic Voucher, plans for modernization of Vnukovo and the potential for development of the National Booking System.

On June 25, RBK has published important for the tourism market news on the future of the Electronic Voucher. President Vladimir Putin ordered to assign one of the units of Rostec State Corporation as the operator of the Electronic Voucher. Federal Agency for Tourism and Rostec have already proposed to prepare a law which will enforce all participants of the tourism market to use the Electronic Voucher in order to make the tourism business transparent.

Vipservice was one of the largest operators involved in the testing of the Electronic Voucher.  As it was noted by Director General of Vipservice Dmitry Gorin in the comment to RBK, the new system will protect interests of tourists and improve the quality of service. As for the assignment of a new operator of the system, according to Dmitry Gorin, Rostec has all technological capabilities for finalizing and operating the Electronic Voucher.

It should be noted that Rostec Corporation already had experience of working with the tourism and transport industries in its project "National Booking System" launched in 2016 and prepared in partnership with Vnukovo airport.

To read the article, follow the link: https://www.rbc.ru/business/25/06/2018/5b2bb8869a7947313a2e00b5

On June 13, Vedomosti newspaper published a lengthy interview with Vitaly Vantsev, a co-owner of Vnukovo International Airport, who explained why he wants to buy out the company's government stake, when the second stage of the new terminal will be built and the state of the regional air carrier Azimut, which he had founded.

As an authorized agent of Azimuth Airlines, Vipservice would like to note several positive news announced in the interview in connection with the carrier's activities. For example, Vitaly Vantsev announced an increase in the frequency of flights in general, the upcoming opening of flights to Simferopol and the start of international flights to Yerevan and Bishkek from Rostov-on-Don by Azimuth in autumn 2018. For now, the carrier performs only domestic flights.

The issue of the National Booking System has also been raised in the interview. Vitaly Vantsev noted that it was created, among other things, to protect the passenger information and store their information on Russian servers. Now Russian airlines use Western reservation systems, and personal information of passengers is kept abroad.  According to Mr. Vantsev, if there is still a requirement to store personal information of Russians in the country (the airlines were withdrawn from it in 2015), the National Booking System can get significant advantages for implementation in the market.  It should be noted that the National Booking System has been operating since 2016 and is fully implemented in Azimuth Airlines, Atlas Global (Turkey), and partially in Ural Airlines and Utair.