Leading Ukrainian Tour Operator that Works with Greek Market Goes Bust

“News Travel”, a major tour operator in Ukraine working with the Greek market, has suspended operations.

On January 17 the tour operator announced that it was suspending sending tourists abroad.

News Travel annually handled travel arrangements for over 120,000 Ukrainians in 31 worldwide destinations including Greece. Many Greek destinations were included in the tour operator’s travel packages such as Crete, Halkidiki, Corfu, Rhodes and Kos. Reports said that the tour operator used to send some 10,000 Ukrainian tourists to Greece.

“Among the reasons for this decision was a sharp drop in demand of our services due to a sharp increase in the exchange rate and negative political situation over the past year,” the announcement on the News Travel website read.

According to reports, the tour operator began to show serious economic losses since last year due to the tension in the region.

Last summer, bookings to Greece from the Ukraine dropped 60 percent while in 2013 some 250,000 Ukrainian tourists had visited the country.

Greece also experienced losses in 2014 when many Russian tour operators went bankrupt.

News Travel, based in Kiev, began operating in 2005 and was one of the fastest growing tourism businesses in Ukraine before the crisis. The tour operator employed over 170 people and had offices in six cities of Ukraine.