Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air has canceled 20 destinations from Ukraine in the winter schedule due to existing demand for them.
“Some flights to/from Ukraine have been canceled due to existing demand, the company’s capacity will be directed to other routes of the network,” the company told Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.
Wizz Air also added that passengers whose reservations have undergone changes will receive a notification with options for a full refund of the ticket price or receiving a 120% refund of the original fare credited as WIZZ credit.
Earlier, the media reported that Wizz Air canceled some flights from all cities of Ukraine, where it operates flights – Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia.
From Kyiv, from mid-January to March, Wizz Air will stop operating flights to Thessaloniki (from January 10 to March 9), Venice (from January 9 to March 11), Naples (from January 11 to March 27), Nuremberg (from January 9 to March 11) and Katowice (from 10 January to March 10). Flights from Lviv canceled to Milan (from January 14 to March 5), Naples (from January 10 to March 5), Rome (from January 10 to March 8), Vilnius (from January 10 to March 8), Memmingen (from January 10 to February 26), Bratislava (from January 11 to March 27) and Budapest (from January 17 to March 12). From Kharkiv – Rome (from January 13 to March 12), Vienna (from January 10 to March 8), and Dortmund (from January 4 to February 24). From Odesa – Abu Dhabi (from January 10 to February 9), and Budapest (from January 9 to March 26). From Zaporizhia – Wroclaw (from January 14 to March 27), Katowice (from January 15 to March 6), and Budapest (from January 11 to March 27).
Ukrainian hotels in the Carpathians are expected to be fully loaded for the New Year period; as of the middle of November, up to 50% of rooms have been booked, hotel operators reported.
“The New Year period cannot be taken as a basis in predicting the dynamics of reservations. New Year is a traditional time of travel. All Ukrainian resorts (Bukovel, Drahobrat, Truskavets, etc.) are occupied for New Year. People plan New Year’s holidays in advance, so it is already difficult to find vacant rooms,” Executive Director of Ribas Hotels Group Andriy Marenchuk told Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, the depth of booking is in line with last year’s indicators, but the number of guaranteed bookings has decreased.
“There was a request from guests for free cancellation of reservations. This is due to COVID-19 restrictions, the political situation and the impossibility of planning,” he said.
According to the hotel operator Reikartz Hotel Group, clients are gradually returning to long-term planning of their holidays: as of mid-November, the occupancy of resort hotels for the New Year and Christmas period is more than 50%. At the same time, the booking period is on average five days or more.
“In Ukrainian Carpathians, they are booked for five or more days. Often such a trip is considered by guests as a full-fledged winter vacation. Hotels for recreation near large cities are more saturated with reservations for 3-4 days,” Head of the resort department at Reikartz Hotels & Resorts Christina Kahuy said.
While hotels in western Ukraine show high occupancy rates, the Black Sea region is facing a difficult period, President of the Ukrainian Hotels and Resorts Association (UHRA) Iryna Sidletska said.
“We are entering a low season, and a difficult period is coming for Black Sea hotels: we predict an average of 25-30% occupancy for the next three months, and only at the expense of a business tourist. At this time, hotels in western Ukraine are gradually recovering due to the New Year holidays and the season of winter holidays,” she told the agency.
As reported by hotel operators, prices for hotel accommodation will rise slightly, based on the increase in utility rates. According to the Reikartz Hotel Group, the price increase for the New Year period averaged 10%.
As reported, the owners of hotels at ski resorts of Ukraine will be fined for the lack of documents confirming the COVID-19 status of tourists (vaccination certificate, negative PCR tests or a certificate of recovery).
Earlier in November, UHRA announced 100% vaccination of employees of most categorized hotels in Ukraine.
The Cabinet of Ministers has introduced temporary restrictions on the entry into Ukraine of citizens of a number of South African countries to counter the spread of the Omicron coronavirus strain.
According to the decision adopted at a government meeting on Thursday, in particular, the entry into the country of citizens of South Africa, the Republic of Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, the Kingdom of Lesotho, the Kingdom of Eswatini, the Republic of Mozambique, and the Republic of Malawi is limited.
In addition, citizens of Ukraine and other countries who have been in these countries for at least seven days in the last 14 days must go through mandatory self-isolation. The resolution comes into force from 24:00 on December 3.
The number of tourists from Saudi Arabia to Ukraine reached 48,700 people in nine months of 2021, which is 10 times more than in entire 2019, the State Agency for Tourism Development reported at a recent aviation tourism forum in Boryspil (Kyiv region).The agency clarified that its calculations were based on the assumption that the minimum expenses of one tourist are $2,000, while, according to expert estimates, they amount to $2,000-3,000.The agency indicated that the cost of the promotional campaign in the Saudi Arabian market was $120,000, another $26,000 was spent on promotional tours.Among the success factors, the agency also named the entry of the leading low-cost airline of Saudi Arabia flynas into the Ukrainian market in May this year and the flights of the Ukrainian SkyUp.At the same time, the agency indicated that in the first half of 2021, the number of tourists to Ukraine decreased by 31.54%, to 1.424 million people. The drop in the indicator was primarily due to tourists from Europe, as a result, their share decreased to 70.4% from 80% in the same period in 2020, while the share of tourists from Asia increased from 10.3% to 24.4%.
The start of repair work at three regional airports in Ukraine and the completion of work at the airports of Dnipro and Kryvy Rih is scheduled for 2022.”In 2022 we plan the start of work at Poltava airport, since the design and estimate documentation will be approved by the state examination by the end of this year, a tender will be announced and we hope that construction work will begin next year,” advisor to the Big Construction presidential program Oleh Varyvoda said during the forum “Great Construction: Aviation. Tourism” in Kyiv.According to him, plans for 2022 include the beginning of reconstruction at the airports of Zhytomyr and Chernivtsi. In addition, in 2022, it is planned to complete work at the airports of Dnipro and Kryvy Rih.
Boryspil International Airport (Kyiv) in 2021 plans to serve 9.5 million passengers, which is 82.7% more than in 2020 (5.2 million), but is only 62% of the pre-crisis 2019 (15.3 million), CEO of the airport Oleksiy Dubrevsky said at the forum “Great Construction: Aviation. Tourism.” “The dynamics of the recovery of the Ukrainian market is better than the optimistic scenario in Europe – 56% according to Eurocontrol … We see today a recovery in passenger traffic: it is due to a deferred demand, charter and low cost segments,” Dubrevsky said.According to him, the volume of charter flights amounted to 3.3 million passengers in the ten months of 2021, most of the charters are served by four airlines: Azur Air, UIA, SkyUp and Windrose. Since the beginning of the year, 468,000 passengers have passed through Boryspil airport on domestic flights.The CEO added that the low cost segment accounts for up to 40% of passenger traffic, while the transit traffic fell sharply.He specified that Boryspil accounts for over 60% of all air transportation in Ukraine.Among the priority investment projects for the next two to three years, the airport’s general director named a new air zone, the modernization of the cargo terminal, a bus station for passengers, an extension of the apron of Terminal D and a private aviation center.“About UAH 1.7 billion is planned for these projects, now we have this money,” he said.In the presentation, the airport’s needs for investments in the airfield infrastructure were estimated at UAH 9 billion, cargo transportation – UAH 3 billion, passenger – UAH 5 billion.
