Falch-Tour
Falch-Tour

Elephant and white bear hanging on the wall, world map, computers, and plants… In Moscow city centre, Persy-Tour looks like any other travel agency. Except that it sells dream holidays, for real. For some 400 Euro per trip, this small Russian travel agency creates a fake vacation in Brazil or China, whereas you were, like every year and all the other hillbillies, in some concrete tower in Turkey or in the suburb of Moscow taking care of your vegetable garden. The services of the agency include: hotel vouchers, tickets of guided trips, photos of you on the beach (thanks to Photoshop), picturesque souvenirs, a detailed story of your adventures at the other side of the world, cocktails sipped on terraces, and grilled crabs on the beach. “We were looking for new ideas”, says Dimitri Popov, 26, the manager of Persy-Tour, who proposes these “falch-tours” (that’s how they’re called) since a few months. “Sending tourists to Brazil and fighting for hotel rooms for 20 or 21 dollars, it’s boring. From all the ideas we have experimented, the falch-tour is the most successful”

Julia, 23, tells that she booked a two-week “trip” in Argentina last December to catch the attention of her boss. “My boss is fond of non-conventional tourism. He went to Iraq, to Latin America (the latter being still exceptional for Russians who generally prefer to go to Turkey or Egypt). I don’t like hot countries. I prefer ski. But I chose Argentina to find new conversation topics to be shared with my boss. For less than 400 Euro, Julia received from Persy-Tour five pictures of her standing in front of a subtropical landscape, a calabash, a rain stick, magnets for a fridge, and of course of the flannel that will make everybody believe that she really travelled to Argentina. Is it not expensive? Julia says: “No, if I make my travel beneficial. I emphasized my difference from the rest of the office workers, I proved my individuality. I know that I will be proposed projects that require more responsibility and initiative”.

Though it’s hard to believe, Persy-Tour makes 20% of its turnover thanks to these fake trips, with “10 to 20 interested clients each month” (doubt is allowed). “We publicize through spam”, Popov says, “it costs 200 dollars to reach 2 million people and it brings us more and more customers. Some seek to “enhance their social status”. Most, however, look for an alibi as they cheat on their spouse, Dimitri confesses: “One of our female clients made her husband believe that she was abroad, while she stayed in Moscow. She needed a plane tickets and hotel voucher, as cheap as possible”.

What about morality? The young Russian deceiver says that he learned fast. “The western business books say that we must sell dreams, don’t they?” One of the golden rules of the fake trip is to bring back spiffy “souvenirs” and disappointments, Popov explains. “If you were supposed to stay in a five-star hotel, you must be able to tell that the personnel were thoughtful, making the bed several times a day, ornating the room. But you must also notice that room maids were interested only in tips. In short, that they were no better than the Russians!” Other tip: “It’s good too when you say that the Caboclos you’ve seen in Brazil were not real Indians. Our tourist has observed that they were actually ordinary Brazilians dressed in folkloric outfits to draw off money”.

Persy-Tour claims that it has “sent” a customer to China: “We bought for him vases on the Chinese market in Moscow and told him that in Beijing the sellers ask 10 dollars for a vase. Yet, he may have got them for 1 dollar if he was helped by an intermediary”.
Persy-Tour even pretends that it has sent a Siberian guy to the moon. “We bought for him a heat insulation jumpsuit and made some pictures of him with a space suit. In Siberia, there are people who believe him”.
The killjoys of sociology doubt that the “falch-tour” becomes a mass phenomenon, even in Russia. “The last time we made a survey on holidays, only 3% of Russians said that they would travel abroad”, says Iuri Poletaev, researcher at the poll institute Levada. “And most often, those who travel avoid making it public, they don’t want to draw attention to their income. The fake tourists remain exotic cases.

Based on: article by Loraine Millot, Liberation, April 22, 2006