The Kremlin in Antalya





The biggest struggle now for the Turkish hotels is to find enough staff members who speak Russian. Those in the tourism industry who had mastered German and English are returning to language school. “Everybody is studying Russian now,” said Suat Esenli, a worker at the Kremlin Palace Hotel, which has more than 800 rooms and opened in 2003, just as Russian tourism began to soar. Typically, about 60 percent of the hotel’s patrons are from the former Soviet Union, with the rest from elsewhere in Europe. Still, the effort to make Russian guests feel comfortable can go too far. For a time, one of the hotel restaurants served the sort of dishes — borscht, blinis and the like — that should have brought joy to a Russian’s heart. The restaurant had to scrap the menu. It turned out that the last thing that the Russians wanted was the food they could get at home.

Why do foreign tourists hate Russians on holidays?
A recent research published in the Netherlands revealed that many foreign tourists, particularly the Dutch, prefer to stay away from Russian holiday-makers in Turkey and Egypt.
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/history/16-06-2008/105517-russian_tourists-0

I think the reason why resort workers are being ´re-educated´ is that the Russian tourists generally only speak Russian (or act like the French). I am very curious to know though - why do they insist on using american dollars only? It´s the strangest thing... Roswitha I will read the article when I get on a computer