Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Response from the Sokos

(Now there are a few Finnish companies I want to pester about things that I find frankly outrageous, Sokos is probably the mildest offender).



Dear Eugene Soukharnikov,

Thank You for Your concerning question. We are very sorry, if You feel that Russia, Russian language or Russian tourists have been discriminated. We understand that any mark can be interpreted as an insult, therefore please let us explain. We sincerely hope that insulting us was not Your aim as well. 
Flags one can see in front of our hotel are selected by the client groups mostly staying in our hotel. Yes, Russians are very important group as well and we sincerely hope to meet them more and more in Tallinn and in our hotel. Comparing to Finns, Swedish, Norwegians and Germans, the percentage of Russians is still lower in our hotel and as mentioned - we hope it is going to change. The times, when there are much more Russian tourist in our hotel, for example New Year and beginning of January, we have also Russian flag welcoming them. This is not about Russian or Estonian history, but simply common policy - in the Autumn we had a week when we had half of visitors from India, so we had accordingly Indian flag. All the other times we have flags by statistics of our hotel visitors in past year. As You understand - whom should we prefer from our clients, if there are ten persons from Austria, ten from Russia, ten from Australia, ten from USA etc - we have 516 rooms and may be 100 nationalities at a time. Estonian flag is a National flag also for local Russians, like US flag is the national flag for local Russians in USA or the Russian flag National flag for Estonias living in Russia.
In Sokos Hotel Viru there is four languages demand for our employees - Estonian, Russian, English and Finnish. We tend to call them local languages, because for our hotel staff it is so. But it is about language, not about state. We are truly sorry, if You have been insulted somewhere because of Russian language or some other way, but we hope and believe it has not been in our hotel.
We hope that our explanation convinced You that we take all our clients as very welcomed guests, no matter what kind of passport he/she has or what language one speaks. You are also very welcome to visit our hotel museum, the first hotel museum in Estonia. There are tours in four languages (including Russian) and we are telling there about 1970-80ties, about our hotel history (built in 1972 by the Finns) and also about the role of KGB in our hotel life. You can find articles about the museum for example in Izvestja, Echo Moskvõ or in English from BBC, Euronews or in German from Deutche Welle or NDR. So You can be also convinced, that we value our past and with our Russians friends we have also good laughs about things from our common past, what non of us liked - like KGB watching in every hotel in Tallinn, Moscow or Leningrad. But this is past now and we are happy to share the common stories. 
Welcome to Tallinn and to Sokos Hotel Viru!

Sincerely Yours,

Harry Põder
Majutusjuht / Hotel Manager 
Sokos Hotel Viru
AS Sokotel, Viru väljak 4, 10111 Tallinn, Estonia
Tel +372 680 9301, Fax +372 680 9304
GSM +372 56 809 301
Sokos Hotel Viru Sales Service, Tel +372 680 9300
www.sokoshotels.ee

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