Intourist: Difference between revisions
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{{short description|Russian tour operator, headquartered in Moscow}} |
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{{use mdy dates|date=November 2020}} |
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{{use American English|date=November 2022}}<!---but other flavors may be intermixed--> |
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<!--- xfr'd "{{Expand Russian|Интурист|date=December 2018}}" to TALK PAGE Nov. 9, 2022 --> |
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{{Infobox company |
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| name = Intourist |
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| logo = File:Intourist_Logo.png |
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| logo_size = 150px |
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| image = Intourist_bus.jpg |
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| image_size = 250px |
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| image_caption = Intourist bus [[LAZ-699]] in [[Armenia]], 2011 |
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| native_name = Интурист |
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| type = [[Open joint-stock company]] |
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| industry = [[Tourism]] and [[hospitality]] |
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| founded = {{Start date and age|1929}} |
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| hq_location = [[Moscow]], [[Russia]] |
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| area_served = [[Russia]] |
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| key_people = {{Unbulleted list|Aleksandr Arutyunov ([[President (corporate title)|President]])|Vyacheslav Kopyev ([[Chairman]])}} |
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| parent = [[Neset Kockar]] (50.1%)<br>[[Sistema]] (49.9%) |
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}} |
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[[File:Александровская колонна 1980.jpg|280px|thumb|Intourist buses at the [[Palace Square]], [[Leningrad]], 1980]] |
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'''Intourist''' ({{lang-ru|Интурист}}, a contraction of {{lang|ru|иностранный турист}}, "foreign tourist") was a Russian tour operator, headquartered in [[Moscow]]. It was founded on April 12, 1929 and served as the primary travel agency for foreign tourists in the [[Soviet Union]]. It was privatized in 1992<ref name=IntouristPriv1992NYT/> and from 2011, was 50.1% owned by the British [[Thomas Cook Group]] until its collapse in September 2019. In November 2019,<ref name=AfterLifeReuters2019/> Anex Tours acquired the stake from the British [[Official receiver|Official Receiver]]. |
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==History== |
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===Lenin era=== |
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Intourist was founded on April 12, 1929 as the "All-Russian Joint-Stock Company for the Acceptance of Foreign Tourists" ({{lang-ru|Всероссийское акционерное общество по приему иностранных туристов ВАО «Интурист»}}). Intourist was responsible for managing the great majority of foreigners' access to, and travel within, the Soviet Union. In 1933, the president of Intourist, [[Wilhelm Adolfovich Kurz|Wilhelm Kurz]], a member of the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Central Committee of the Soviet Union]], was the first Soviet official to visit the United States after the US granted recognition to the Soviet Union.<ref name=Kurtz>{{cite news |
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|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/11/22/90654458.html?pageNumber=8 |
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|title=Kurtz, Here, Gives Soviet Travel Aim |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=November 11, 1933}}</ref> |
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In 1933 [[Aron Sheinman]] started work for Intourist in London and filled the post of Director from 1937 to 1939. When he was dismissed he refused to return to Moscow, and gained British citizenship later that year.<ref>{{cite web |title=Aaron Lwowitch SCHEINMAN, aliases SHEIMANN, CHEINMAN: Russian/British. A revolutionary |
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|url=http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11249279 |
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|publisher=[[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]] |access-date=May 26, 2015}}</ref> |
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===Stalin era=== |
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[[File:Moscow (Travel poster).jpg|thumb|Poster advertising tourism to the [[Moscow]] in the [[Soviet Union]], Intourist, 1930]] |
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Things presumably went along as planned: "In the late Stalin era, the number of foreigners visiting the Soviet Union dropped to nearly zero" as state officials actively discouraged travellers.<ref name=hazanov16/> |
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===Post-Stalin era=== |
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The scholar Alex Hazanov writes in his dissertation on Intourist that "in the alternate universe that was the Soviet Union, the 'giant squid' of the Soviet state [would] engulf the traveler.. [There were] myriad ways in which the Soviet tourist monopoly, Intourist, both hindered the foreigner and shielded him from the vagaries of Soviet material life, and above all, the psychological costs of 'routine surveillance'... and the barriers the Soviets erected between foreigners and unvarnished (and uncomfortable) truths about the Soviet Union." Hazanov propounds that the Soviet state apparatchiks at Intourist had a "commitment to authoritarianism and social discipline as an instrument of geopolitical resistance." Indeed there were ties between Intourist and the [[KGB]].<ref name="hazanov16">{{cite book |last1=Hazanov |first1=Alexander |
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|title=POROUS EMPIRE: FOREIGN VISITORS AND THE POST-STALIN SOVIET STATE |date=2016 |
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|publisher=University of Pennsylvania |url=https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4116&context=edissertations}}</ref> |
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In 1953, the decree banning Soviet citizens from marriage to a foreigner was abolished.<ref name=hazanov16/> |
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Intourist began selling packages to foreigners in 1955. It was "charged with obtaining hard currency to be used for imports of machinery that would help make the Soviet Union independent of global markets."<ref name=hazanov16/> |
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In 1956, the USSR received 56,000 tourists. In 1963, it received 168,000 tourists. By the early 1970s, it received 4,000,000 travelers yearly.<ref name=hazanov16/> |
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Visits were subject to "prior coordination" and excluded "specifically designated zones" such as a limited number of neighborhoods in a limited number of cities. This is a "principle that would define Soviet regulation of foreign travel for all categories of foreigners until 1991" and beyond.<ref name=hazanov16/> |
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Special note is taken in Hazanov's thesis of the 1957 [[6th World Festival of Youth and Students|Moscow Youth Festival]], the 1959 [[Sokolniki Exhibition]], and |
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the 1980 [[Moscow Olympics]], and he seems to accept the school of thought, "popularized by ''[[New York Times]]'' journalist [[Thomas Friedman]]’s paeans to globalization, ... that international exchange is the handmaiden of liberalization and erosion of authoritarian regimes", by which means ultimately Intourist can be seen as an unwitting cuckoo in the Soviet nest.<ref name=hazanov16/> |
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===After privatisation=== |
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In 1990, Intourist (as the exclusive travel agency in the Soviet Union)<ref name=AfterLifeReuters2019/> held a dominant position in the market with 110 hotels and handled 2 million foreign tourists per year.<ref name=SpecterNYT90>{{cite news |
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|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/18/business/suddenly-the-specter-of-capitalism-is-haunting-intourist.html |
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|title=Suddenly, the Specter of Capitalism Is Haunting Intourist |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
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|date=November 18, 1990}}</ref> |
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By early 1992, "tourists could get a guided tour of the KGB headquarters for $35".<ref name=hazanov16/> The enterprise was [[privatisation|privatised]] that year<ref name=IntouristPriv1992NYT>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
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|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/24/travel/l-intourist-lives-487192.html |
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|quote=VAO Intourist Joint Stock Travel Company is now privatized .. tourism to the Commonwealth of Independent States. |
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|title=Intourist Lives |author1=LEXEY MESIATSEV |author2=Henry Kamm |date=May 24, 1992 |access-date=November 9, 2022}}</ref> along with a great many other Soviet bureaucracies during [[Boris Yeltsin]]'s tenure. In 1992, Intourist became the first Russian company to acquire an American company when it acquired a 75% interest in Rahim Tours of Florida.<ref name=Rahim>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
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|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/25/business/company-news-russia-investment.html |
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|title=Company News: Russia Investment |date=March 25, 1992}}</ref> |
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In 2011, British tour operator [[Thomas Cook Group|Thomas Cook Group plc]] acquired a 50.1% interest in Intourist for $45 million. The company sought to gain access to Russian travelers going abroad. Intourist had handled 600,000 passengers in 2009.<ref name=Cook>{{cite news |
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|url=https://www.ft.com/content/cc01b3d0-f86a-11df-8b7b-00144feab49a |
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|title=Stalin-era tour operator comes in from the cold |
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|work=[[Financial Times]] |date=November 29, 2010}}</ref> |
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On November 15, 2019, Neset Kockar, chairman of Turkish tour operator Anex Tours, acquired Intourist from Thomas Cook's liquidators.<ref name=AfterLifeReuters2019>{{cite news |
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|title=Russian travel agency Intourist plans IPO after shareholder change |
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|url=https://reuters.com/article/us-thomas-cook-grp-investment-russia/russian-travel-agency-intourist-plans-ipo-after-shareholder-change-idUKKBN1XP0Y9 |
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|website=[[Reuters]] |access-date=December 3, 2019 |language=en |date=November 15, 2019}}</ref> |
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==Competition== |
==Competition== |
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Although the Soviet Union was not enamored of competition,<ref name=USSRcomp1NYT1990>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
Although the Soviet Union was not enamored of competition,<ref name=USSRcomp1NYT1990>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
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|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/12/archives/the-communist-competition.html |
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/12/archives/the-communist-competition.html |
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|title=The Communist Competition |date=May 12, 1964}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
|title=The Communist Competition |date=May 12, 1964}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
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|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/05/archives/krokodil-comments-on-economic-crime-russia-has-socialist-crime-too.html |
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/05/archives/krokodil-comments-on-economic-crime-russia-has-socialist-crime-too.html |
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|title=KROKODIL COMMENTS ON “ECONOMIC CRIME”; Russia Has 'Socialist Crime,' Too |
|title=KROKODIL COMMENTS ON “ECONOMIC CRIME”; Russia Has 'Socialist Crime,' Too |
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|date=April 5, 1964 |access-date=November 10, 2022}}</ref> ''Intourist'' did have competition<ref name=LifeWithoutIntourist1991NYT/> in the form of Intourbureau, the Soviet Central Council of Tourism and Excursions.<ref name=LifeWithoutIntourist1991NYT>{{cite news |
|date=April 5, 1964 |access-date=November 10, 2022}}</ref> ''Intourist'' did have competition<ref name=LifeWithoutIntourist1991NYT/> in the form of Intourbureau, and the Soviet Central Council of Tourism and Excursions.<ref name=LifeWithoutIntourist1991NYT>{{cite news |
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|newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
|newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |
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|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/06/travel/life-without-intourist.html |
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/06/travel/life-without-intourist.html |
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This competition to provide better service was to encourage visiting by non-Soviet unions, albeit not |
This competition to provide better service was to encourage visiting by non-Soviet unions, albeit not |
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in a way that would save money.<ref name=LifeWithoutIntourist1991NYT/> |
in a way that would save money.<ref name=LifeWithoutIntourist1991NYT/> |
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==Publications== |
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*''[[iarchive:Crimea 201303|Visit Crimea]]'' Moscow: Intourist, 1930 |
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==See also== |
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{{Portal|Companies|Russia}} |
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* [[Tourism in Russia]] |
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* [[Torgsin]] |
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* [[Beryozka (Russian retail store)|Beryozka]] |
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==References== |
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{{reflist}} |
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==External links== |
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{{commons category|Intourist}} |
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* [http://www.intourist.com/ Intourist] |
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[[Category:1929 establishments in Russia]] |
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[[Category:Companies based in Moscow]] |
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[[Category:Transport companies established in 1929]] |
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[[Category:Russian brands]] |
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[[Category:Soviet brands]] |
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[[Category:Tourism agencies]] |
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[[Category:Tourism in the Soviet Union]] |
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[[Category:Travel and holiday companies of Russia]] |
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[[Category:Travel and holiday companies of the Soviet Union]] |
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Revision as of 03:23, 13 November 2022
Competition
Although the Soviet Union was not enamored of competition,[1][2][3] Intourist did have competition[4] in the form of Intourbureau, and the Soviet Central Council of Tourism and Excursions.[4] The New York Times described this competition as "tiptoed onto Intourist's turf ."[4] Quaker-founded Goodwill Holidays helped sell Intourbureau's competing offerings, which included use of hotels owned by the Soviet Central Council of Tourism and Excursions. They were the competition to Intourist's hotels that were staffed by employees described by an American tourist as being "as friendly as wardens at the state pen."[4]
This competition to provide better service was to encourage visiting by non-Soviet unions, albeit not in a way that would save money.[4]
- ^ Craig R. Whitney (July 20, 1980). "Competition In Soviet Life Is Less Than Olympian; Crafty Buying and 'Thing-ism'". The New York Times. Retrieved November 10, 2022.
- ^ The Communist Competition, May 12, 1964
- ^ "KROKODIL COMMENTS ON "ECONOMIC CRIME"; Russia Has 'Socialist Crime,' Too". The New York Times. April 5, 1964. Retrieved November 10, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Allen R. Myerson (October 6, 1991). "Life Without Intourist". The New York Times. Retrieved November 10, 2022.
hotels patrolled by personnel as friendly as wardens at the state pen