Deal on Hotels Seen as Progress in Soviet Travel

When the fall semester ended last month, Cal State Fullerton professor Robert S. Feldman boarded a flight for Leningrad so hastily that he had to grade final examinations as he crossed the Atlantic.

Feldman, director of the university’s Russian and East European Area Studies program, said the quick exit was worth the trouble. He sealed a deal for his small Placentia travel company that he said makes him the first American to deal directly for rooms at hotels in the Soviet Union.

Under the arrangement, Feldman said, he will book the tour groups he leads to the Soviet Union directly into the Leningrad Hotel or the Yalta Hotel, instead of having to make arrangements through Intourist, the national tourist office.

Feldman’s deal is significant because he believes it marks the first time a small U.S. travel company has signed a contract for reservations with major Soviet hotels.

And he said it will allow him, as a small tour operator, to deal directly for hotel space that might normally be unavailable, except to large outfits.

“I couldn’t get (hotel rooms) through Intourist unless I was a great big tour operator,” he said. “Space is at a premium in Soviet hotels, especially in the summer.”

In addition, Feldman said, booking directly with the hotels and getting to know their staff members should mean better service for his groups.

As part of the deal, Feldman will arrange tours of the United States for staff members of the two Soviet hotels. A key part of the tours will be visits to hotel management schools so the Soviet visitors can see how U.S. hotels are run.

Feldman is president of East-West International Tours Inc., a private tour company not affiliated with the university.

The Russian-speaking Feldman said he was introduced to the tour business in 1978 after a neighbor who knew of his expertise in Soviet studies urged him to lead a sightseeing and cultural trip to the Soviet Union.

Much to his surprise, Feldman said, he enjoyed shepherding a pack of tourists through major Soviet cities and some of the nation’s far-flung republics. But for the next few years, campus responsibilities kept him from developing a business.

When campus duties lightened, Feldman said, he started his agency in 1984. He has led about a dozen tour groups so far. During those visits he has developed business relationships with Soviet hotel officials that blossomed with the coming of perestroika, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program of economic reform.

Business has expanded so much that Feldman said he will take a leave of absence from the university for a year to work on a book of readings about Gorbachev and his policies and to expand his tour business.

As for his end of the deal, Feldman said, he is planning to lead Leningrad Hotel staff members in September for a tour of New York, Washington and the hotel school at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

While details are being worked out, he also hopes a group from the Yalta Hotel can tour Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and stop off at the hotel school at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in November.