Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.30 / Trend Akhundov /
Cooperation of hotels and travel agencies will contribute to the development of the tourism sector in Azerbaijan, Nahid Bagirov, the Azerbaijani Travel Agencies Association chairman Nahid Bagirov said said at a roundtable with participation of representatives of travel agencies and hotels on Friday.
The meeting discussed issues of cooperation between travel agencies and hotels, prospects and problems of cooperation, as well as organizational issues.
During the meeting, representatives of travel agencies have expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that foreign travel agencies negotiating with local hotels can get lower travel costs for their clients, rather than local companies.
Hotels in turn, decreasing prices for the local travel agencies offer to reduce the amount of paid commission or not to pay them at all. According to representatives of hotels, travel agencies don't provide them with clients throughout the year.
Representatives of travel agencies also expressed dissatisfaction that the marketing departments of the hotels serve as travel agencies.
The participants of the roundtable voiced a number of proposals to solve these problems.
According to the Enctours travel agency's managing director Emil Nasibov, it will be advisable if hotels determine prices for travel agencies depending on the number of tourists, offered by companies, and also depending on the season. He also made an offer to impose a tax on reservation of rooms in local hotels by foreign companies, and releasing local companies from this tax.
As a result of discussions it was decided to merge the tourism associations and Azerbaijani hotels.
A joint memorandum on mutual cooperation of travel agencies and hotels was the basis for further activity of the Association.
"Concluding an agreement between the local hotels and travel agencies is reasonable for increasing tourist flow to Azerbaijan and promote the work of travel agencies, which will envisage providing hotels with preferential travel prices for travel companies," the memorandum says.
According to the document, travel agencies should protect the interests of hotels, with whom they cooperate, organize advertising of hotels in local and international exhibitions.
A decision was made to establish a working group to tackle mutual problems. The working group will consist of two representatives from travel agencies and hotels. These are Hyatt hotel and Radisson Blu, travel agencies Enctours and Eurotour, as well as chairman of the Azerbaijani Association of Tourism Nahid Bagirov.
The Azerbaijani Travel Agencies Association was created with the assistance of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture in January 2009. The board members include Improtex Travel, Caspian Travel, Pasha Travel, Silkway Travel, Euroturizm CEOs. Over 51 travel agencies are members of the association.
The association protects the interests of travel agencies, develops bills, recommendations and regulations, assists in establishing national travel companies. It develops plans to conduct trainings and seminars for market participants, creates conditions for advertising of Azerbaijani tourism at annual international exhibitions; develops domestic tourism and presents tourism products at the world market.