RateHawk threatened with boycott in Poland
RateHawk, one of the leaders in B2B systems, owned among others by Russian entrepreneurs and therefore Russian capital, is facing a boycott on the Polish market. Already one major travel agency specializing in business travel has suspended cooperation with RateHawk.
Last year RatwHawk started to expand on the Polish market, in addition to airline tickets it also placed a strong bet on its own hotel contracting and managed to sign contracts with several independent hotel chains in Poland.
In the wake of Russia's shameful aggression against Ukraine, many in the travel industry are considering a boycott of RateHawk, suspension of cooperation, removal from membership in associations and organizations.
RateHawk is part of the Emerging Travel Group, which also includes: Zenhotels.ru, Ostrovok.ru (the most popular portal for booking travel services in Russia), B2BOstrovok.ru – Komandriovki (business travel market).
In 2019, private investment fund LVL1 GROUP injected $10 million into Ratehawk.
The main shareholders of the LVL1 Group fund are Russian businessman Lev Bizumovich Leviev – co-founder of VK.RU – the largest Russian social network, based in Moscow, and the owner of Selectel – Russian internet hosting provider, based in St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg.
The other shareholders of LVL1 Group are Igor and Dimitry Bukhman – owners of the IT company Playtrix, founded in 2004 in Vologda, Russia.
In a letter from ETG CEO Felix Shpilman, it was highlighted that Emerging Travel Inc. is an American company registered in the state of Delaware on 8 September 2010. ("ETG"). ETG was founded by Serge’a Faguet, a Ukrainian citizen, and Kirill Makharinsky’a British citizen. ETG has more than 45 shareholders. More than 90 percent of. of ETG's share capital is controlled by citizens of the US, UK, Israel and Ukraine.
ETG's board of directors consists of 5 individuals who are citizens of Portugal, Israel, USA and Latvia.
It is worth mentioning that none of ETG's shareholders or members of the Board are subject to any international sanctions.
So the company falls victim to connections with Russian capital.
According to our information, one of the major players in the Polish business travel market has blocked all RateHawk operations. More and more travel agencies intend to go this route. We have unofficially learned that members of a major travel authority organization are calling for RateHawk to be removed from its ranks.
