Russia's Homegrown Online Travel Firms Poised for Competitive Reset
Skift Take
Some analysts believe the online booking giants of Europe, the U.S., and China will sweep the world. Call it "travel giant triumphalism." But Russia may prove a treacherous market for foreign brands, opening a gap for local players.
Russia has to some extent been a humbling market for foreign online travel giants such as Airbnb, Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, and Trip.com Group — so far. The past couple of years has brought upheaval that may favor homegrown travel players catering to Russian-speaking travelers, such as Aviasales, OneTwoTrip, Ostrovok, Biletix.ru, and Tutu.ru — at least for now.
Russians have long shopped patriotically, often favoring homegrown brands. Exhibit A: They use Russian search giant Yandex. Google has second-place popularity. Yandex offers travel price-comparison search that's much more substantive than Google's content today.
The rare foreign brand to break through in a big way in Russia has been Booking.com. Before the pandemic, the brand accounted for about 70 percent of online travel sales of Russian hotels according to tour operator Svoy TS. But the brand has faced turbulence recently.
This summer, the Netherlands-based giant of a U.S. conglomerate is challenging the conclusions of the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service, which in December found the brand to have violated antimonopoly law by imposing a so-called price parity requirement on hotels. While the brand has faced similar complaints in many European countries for years, Russia could take a sterner line. The law would let it charge a fine of between 1 percent and 15 percent of Booking.com's annual revenue generated in Russia.
Another new law affecting Booking.com among other foreign travel brands is a requirement they have a local office as of January 2022.
Separately, since 2018, a few Russian travel companies have p
