Let’s dream…

What can we dream about? The new holiday season starts very soon and we must not dream, but should closely deal with the consideration of proposals, so that later there won’t be an unpleasant feeling for a meaningless vacation. Moreover, now you can find ways to spend your vacation without leaving your work sitting at your personal computer.

Planning a vacation online

Today you can find on the Internet all that you want to know about vacations and resorts, and even what you absolutely do not need to know. Internet-offers, Internet-sales are being introduced actively into the tourist market these days. Online tour sales gradually "bite off" a larger sector of the market, pushing out of the market classic travel agencies.

Of course, you need to have some experience in order to orient yourself. But in any case, if you want, you can get much more information on the Internet than from the most experienced manager. The matter is that most of us trust people more than soulless websites. But this process is already irreversible, more and more purchases in all branches are carried out by means of the Internet.

As a result tour operators and travel agents face the fact that sales of the tourist product will go further and further into the network. This does not mean that all travel agencies will die out instantly, like dinosaurs at the time of the beginning of the Ice Age. I think it will happen rather like with mammoths, they will slowly reduce their habitat, shrink in size, move further north, and eventually quietly die among the mosses and lichens of Franz- Joseph Land, at the moment when in the south the Egyptians were already building their pyramids.

It's pointless to talk about the techniques of the online tours selling because it doesn’t differ from other online sales. When choosing an online tour, the travel agency is excluded from the chain that connects the resort directly with the tourist, which saves the tourist from having to pay for the extra services. Accordingly, the final cost of the product becomes smaller. Nowadays, when you have to save almost all the time, this fact also becomes a trump, which encourages the tourist to buy in such a way.

Of course, to compile a more or less plausible picture you need to study a lot of information. It's necessary that you can find what really interests you right away. But in any case, it will be only your choice. And the quality of your holiday will depend only on your decision.

It is difficult to predict in what direction the online sales will move in future. The only thing that I would advise you – always move up with the time. Though, as it was said one hundred and fifty years ago, "you have to run at full speed to just stay in the same place and you need to run twice as fast to get to another place".

On the eve of the new tourist season, I want to wish everyone a good holiday, new impressions. Be interested in where and how you can spend your vacation with pleasure!

Unexplored Turkey

Turkey is one of the most visited countries by our tourists thanks to the visa-free entry regime between our countries, really low-cost air travel, and of course due to the well-developed infrastructure of Turkey marine tourism, well adapted to the Russian-speaking tourists. Lots of people have visited Turkey but few of them knows anything about this country apart from Istanbul, Antalya, Ankara and maybe three or four resort cities.

No, in that case, I'm not talking about monuments of ancient history, carefully excavated, well-restored, and sometimes just invented. That is daily bread and means for subsistence for Turkey and wherever you go for vacations, you will definitely be invited to visit Troy, Ephesus or something like that. I mean Turkey itself, how it lives outside its resort area.

Non-resort zone of Turkey

I do not consider myself a great expert in non-touristic Turkey, but one of my trips to this country was a bus tour, during which, we had to drive about two thousand kilometers on Turkey's roads. Here is what I’ve seen from the window of the bus and now can tell you.

I must say that during the trip on the bus, Turkish cities and villages flash like funny pictures. All Turkish, including major cities (Izmir, Antalya, Denizli), not taking Istanbul into consideration, are very similar to each other and do not look like European cities. Medium-rise buildings, mostly five to six floors, almost no skyscrapers, fairly wide streets. There are huge factories and industrial zones on the outskirts. In general, when you are going through Turkey, you notice how intensively Turkish people work. Although it is the eastern country, there is no atmosphere of easy laziness anywhere. Turkey looks like a huge anthill.

There is a particular attitude to green plantations. In continental Turkey, the climate is really dry, and without artificial irrigation, nothing grows in fact, nothing except for stunted weeds. At the same time in the cities, you can see an abundance of well-tended greenery. Lawns, bushes, flowers, palm trees, everything pleases the eye in huge amounts. Looking at all this, you understand how much human labor it is worth.

Moreover, Turkey reminds a very big building site. Wherever you would go, you will come across building landscapes everywhere. Houses, factories, roads, and bridges are being built. Everywhere. All this grows like mushrooms after the rain. At the same time, you won’t see any construction debris anywhere. Only dust. But there is a lot of it in Turkey without any construction projects.

So, in the non-tourist part of Turkey, there are also many interesting and instructive things. I would not recommend going specifically there, but if you are already there, take with you a device to take a couple (hundreds) of pictures. You will not regret.