Two travel companies specializing in bringing Russian holidaymakers to Vietnam via air charter will suspend two of its services as of Wednesday thanks to the falling number of bookings apparently caused by the ruble crisis.

Anh Duong Co. and its partner, Pegas Touristik, will stop launching charter flights to the southern resort island of Phu Quoc and Ho Chi Minh City as the services will only make losses, newswire The Saigon Times Online reported on Tuesday.

The two will offer the last flight to bring a group of tourists visiting Phu Quoc back to Russia today, and suspend the service until the situation improves, according to the economic news website.

Phu Quoc is the less occupied Vietnam service of Anh Duong Co., its chairwoman Hoang Thi Phong Thu admitted.

Anh Duong and Pegas Touristik are the market leader in organizing Vietnam tour packages for Russian tourists.

Last year the two received more than 190,000 vacationers from Russia, up 20 percent from 2013. But the number of customers has dropped to only 6,000 so far this month, according to Thu.

The chairwoman added that the number of bookings for future tours is also very disappointing.

Around 3,500 tourists have booked tours to Vietnam next month, but the respective figures for March and April are only 600 and 100, Thu elaborated.

“These figures are unusual. At this time of the year, we used to receive full bookings for the following months,” she said.

The charter service suspension did not come unexpected as the companies had revealed in December that they might stop bringing tourists by air charter to Vietnam as the ruble crisis began in Russia around that time.

The weak ruble is the main reason that discourages Russians from traveling abroad, according to industry insiders.

“Russian tourists are paid in ruble, but have to pay in U.S. dollars for their travel plans,” Nguyen Duc Tan, managing director of Anex Tour Vietnam, told newswire VnExpress.

If a Russian couple had to pay US$800, or 28,000 rubles for a 12-night stay at a four-star hotel in Vietnam in 2013, they had to pay 49,000 rubles in late December 2014 as the currency had weakened, Tan said.

“It’s also not easy for Russians to buy dollars as the government has limited sales, while the greenback is 10 percent more expensive in the black market,” he added.

Anex Tour Vietnam used to offer 52 charter flights, bringing 11,500 tourists from 12 major Russian cities, to Vietnam every month.

“But we will have to reduce the flights to 40 or even 20 in this situation,” he said, adding the company could also fail to achieve its target of bringing 120,000 Russian holidaymakers to Vietnam this year.

Pegas Touristik also had to send some of its foreign employees back to their headquarters in Russia as there are not enough customers to serve. The firm has cut the number of charter flights between Russia and the south-central Vietnamese province of Khanh Hoa, home to the famous Nha Trang beaches which are a haunt of Russian tourists.

Russian tourists usually travel by air charter to Cam Ranh International Airport in Khanh Hoa before heading for beautiful resorts and beaches in such tourist hotspots as Nha Trang, Mui Ne, and Ninh Thuan.

Vietnam welcomed more than 364,000 Russian tourists in 2014, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

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