“As May begins, so will the summer go” — this old saying has never failed Crimean hoteliers. If many tourists arrive for the May holidays, the rooms won’t go empty during the season. Back in April, collaborators told Crimeans that the forecast for the summer was “extremely favorable.”

“Demand exceeds last year’s figures by about 15–30%, depending on the region and the property,” said Sergey Makovey, head of the Crimean Hotel Association.

Reality (as always, however) turns out to be different.

“By May 1, more than two-thirds of my rooms were booked. I was happy to be starting the summer off so well. But then, a day or two before check-in, the cancellations started pouring in one after another. Not even the advance payment deterred anyone. In the end, I couldn’t even recoup the opening costs. I don’t know if I’ll make any money this season or if I’ll just break even,” laments the owner of a mini-hotel in Sudak. The hotelier has a hunch as to why vacationers changed their plans at the last minute. And among the reasons is not just the weather, which has been unkind this spring. Crimea has become one of the hottest spots on the map of military operations. Moreover, people are afraid not so much of Ukrainian drones, which are targeting military facilities, as of Russian air defense systems.

“They don’t give a damn about civilians at all, not in the slightest. Firing an anti-aircraft missile that creates a cloud of 10,000 shards near high-rises? They do it without a second thought. That’s just how they are — if they’re going to walk, they walk; if they’re going to shoot, they shoot. That’s exactly it,” the guide from Sevastopol says sarcastically. He suspects there won’t be any crowds of tourists in the city anytime soon.

His fellow Sevastopol resident, who works in maritime transport, is even more pessimistic.

“I’m not expecting anything at all from this summer. Just like the previous two. I have three pleasure yachts sitting idle. They won’t let me work on them — they’ve banned us from going out to sea. I’m sitting here counting my losses while they carry out their ‘special military operation’ according to plan.”

The owner of a beach café in Yevpatoria has no illusions about the coming summer either.

“Not only is there shooting and explosions almost every night, but they say they’ve started laying mines along the coast and in the adjacent waters. What normal person would go swimming among mines?” the restaurateur asks rhetorically, while also mentioning the traffic jams on the Kerch Bridge and the internet problems.

“They’re constantly jamming it so Ukrainian drones lose their way. But the drones still make it, and we’re ‘out of range.’

“But it’s cheap,” — Crimeans don’t even laugh at this annual mantra of Gauleiter Aksyonov anymore.

“Agreements have been reached with practically all accommodation providers. I’m confident the vast majority won’t engage in speculative actions,” he stated this time.

“But even if I wanted to make a deal with them, how could I lower prices? Will they lower my taxes? Or my utility bills? Or give me a low-interest loan?” — the owner of a small hotel in Alushta doesn’t hide her irritation.

“The cost of vacation packages is simply astronomical right now. And the facilities can’t lower prices because of the high cost of services,” explains the manager of a Simferopol travel agency that works with Crimean sanatoriums and vacation homes.

“One ruble in, two rubles out,” smiles the owner of a souvenir shop in Feodosia, recalling last year’s fuel crisis, when vacationers, instead of sunbathing, wandered around empty gas stations and couldn’t leave the peninsula for days on end. “Ending up with an empty tank and no way to refuel — that’s not a great prospect. And this summer, it’s no less real. We can see what’s happening in Tuapse. But at least they aren’t our competitors this summer,” the entrepreneur remarks sarcastically.