UKRAINIAN ground handler Asla is planning a fam trip for UK tour operators to showcase the Crimean region and the Black Sea resort of Yalta.
“It is now possible to visit the battlefields of the Crimean War, where the Russians fought the British, French and Turkish in the 1850s and where Florence Nightingale tended the wounded,” said managing director Steven Penney.
“Yalta is on the equivalent of the Russian riviera, on the Black Sea. It is where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt met to discuss their plans for Germany at the end of the Second World War.”
The fam trip will be based on a new connecting flight from Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, to Simferopol, the capital of the Crimean region. The flight will be with flag-carrier Ukraine International Airlines.
“The Crimea was on the tourist map until the Soviet Union fell apart in the early ’90s and it became impossible to operate there,” said Penney.
Asla, which is based in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, is the UK arm of Ukraine-based Arktur and provides services to specialist operators Fregata and Intourist.
n The Ukraine International Travel and Tourism Exhibition, UITT, a trade fair for inbound and outbound operators, will take place in Kiev’s Sports Palace from April 14-17.