Wednesday, 02.11.2011
Recently foreign tourists who want to book a room in Ukrainian hotels for staying during EURO 2012 face the problem of rooms´ unavailability. Even the most popular systems for online booking offer few and those that are available cost some 4-6 times more than medium European price for such a room. Poland experienced the same troubles.
However, the main EURO 2012 host – Union of European Football Associations – tries to calm fans and explains that the hotels will offer available rooms but later. The thing is that UEFA decided to put British company TUI Travel Plc as an official operator for championship guests’ accommodation. It was this company that booked hundreds of rooms in Ukrainian and Polish hotels during EURO 2012 holding in order to sell them to football tourists.
According to information announced by TUI Travel Plc officials, in a few weeks they promised to launch the official site where rooms would be available for online booking. Nevertheless, UEFA already used such a mechanism during similar sports tournaments.
“They purchased all rooms even in hotels that are under construction. Therefore, they promised to sell them on our price, but I have a lot of doubts,” said head of one of the three-star hotels in Kiev to ‘Segodnya’ newspaper. TUI Travel Plc officials assured that prices for the rooms would be moderate. “Of course we’re not a charity but we haven’t got such a purpose to mark up prices. It will consist of the face value of the room plus administrative expenses,” said head of the Ukrainian brunch of the British company.
Also he commented upon the peculiarities of the booking process in Ukrainian and Polish hotels that would be available on the companies’ site. Firstly, tourist will take an advantage of booking some low price rooms in hostels, sanatoriums, resorts and renovated residences for EURO 2012 purpose. The next year, fans will have opportunity to book four and five star hotels that were reserved for UEFA delegations but unrequested by them.
It was announced earlier that Ukraine have deficit of the hotel room for EURO 2012 fans. In particular, it is Kiev and Donetsk that lack apartments in hotels. The most required rooms among the fans, of course, are low-price one. Local authorities in order to solve the problem, offer to accommodate fans in private apartments and camping towns constructed for EURO 2012 purpose.
