Smolensk tourism boom

7th May 2010

© PD Tours to the crash site have already started Share:

A number of Polish travel agencies have begun offering tours to the site where the presidential plane crashed in Smolensk.

The trip, which costs in the region of PLN 1,000, includes travel and accommodation, says Marek Skolimowski of ‘Community 2000’ (‘Wspolnota 2000’), one of the agencies which has got involved.

“We started receiving a number of calls right after the disaster from people right across the board looking for help on how to reach Smolensk. To begin with, these calls were from television crews and various state institutions seeking accommodation, but then eventually we started getting enquiries from ordinary people - ranging from OAPs to students.”

This week will see a group of 52 school children from Warsaw taken to visit the site - and it’s an area of the market that Skolimowski hopes to tap into.

“We really expect the boom to begin in the autumn period. That’s when we’ll be sending out our package deal offer to primary and secondary schools around the country.”

As part of the trip, customers can also expect to visit Katyn where they will have the opportunity to pay their respects to the 22,000 Poles who were shot dead by Soviet troops in 1940.

As it stands, a lot of the larger travel firms on the market have distanced themselves from jumping on the Smolensk bandwagon just yet. But Orbis, one of the country’s more recognised travel companies, has already decided to modify its nine-day trip to Russia, by working Smolensk into its programme.