After the power outages began against the background of a shortage of gasoline on the peninsula, there were even fewer people wishing to relax in the Crimea. However, there are tourists and even unusual ones have appeared.
"They asked: "Are they cutting off electricity? But there is water!?". After that, we immediately settled in," says one of the Yalta apartment managers.
The shortage of gasoline and power outages have become a stunning blow especially for medium and small businesses in Crimea. But there are still tourists. There were also unusual ones.
One of the Yalta apartment managers says that people are coming to the peninsula from new regions, where the situation may be even worse. At the same time, mini-hotels and apartments are forced to lower prices, as they are faced with widespread refusals of tourists from the mainland, and they can ask for rooms many times less.
In recent years, the private car fleet has grown exponentially on the peninsula and one of the sources of tourism has become domestic. Due to the lack of gasoline, it also ran out. But it has partially survived from Sevastopol, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are massively attacking military facilities and energy infrastructure.
"Sevastopol residents come just to sleep it off," they say in one of the hotels in Big Yalta.
The scale of losses of local hoteliers can be estimated by the fact that in one of the one and a half thousand hotels the last check-in was only 14 people. Therefore, for example, on the Southern coast of Crimea, they try not to build long-range forecasts. Especially after large-scale power outages began last week, which lasted 8-10 hours at a time.
On the weekend, however, the situation improved. Outages have become shorter. According to some reports, the Ukrainian Armed Forces could not damage the two main thermal power plants of Crimea, near Simferopol and Sevastopol, reaching only the distribution substations. And it has already become a breath of fresh air for tourism and the residents themselves. The sea is clean, transparent and warm in June and has not gone anywhere.