tyrservis.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod travel agency "Tur-Ekspress-Servis" (Tour-Express-Service). The firm occupied office 305 at 24 Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street in Nizhny Novgorod and took calls at (831) 419-92-60 and 419-49-57[1]. The earliest archive-robot visit to the address is dated 1 February 2002, and the latest 18 December 2024[2]. The agency was already listed in the Nizhny Novgorod site directory on nn.ru by the summer of 2002[3], while the only surviving snapshot with content of the home page dates to 19 July 2013[1].

What the site looked like

By 2013 the site was laid out as a showcase for a mid-tier travel agency. The header carried the name "Tur - Ekspress - Servis," two city telephone numbers, and the address "Bolshaya Pecherskaya St., 24/305"; next to it were manager names with instant-messenger numbers: "Igor 664804365, Evgenia 647407584," and below that "Evgenia jane-fox1386." The top menu had five items: "About the Company," "Choose a Tour," "Transport," "Deals and Discounts," "Contacts"[1].

The offerings were arranged in three columns. "Holidays Abroad" included last-minute tours, departures from Nizhny Novgorod, sightseeing and bus tours around Europe, medical treatment abroad, and sea cruises. "Holidays in Russia" covered bus tours to southern Russia and Crimea, sanatoriums and boarding houses of Nizhny Novgorod Region, Kazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg, river cruises, and children's holidays. The third column, "Services," offered holidays on credit, transfer booking, and a gift certificate; a separate item was transport "from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow's airports"[1].

The middle of the page held three early-booking blocks. As the home page announced, there was "Summer 2013 in Krasnodar Krai, Crimea and Abkhazia with a 6% discount," and for foreign destinations — "Turkey, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Tunisia, Bulgaria with departure from Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow. Hotel discounts of up to 30%." The third block promoted Czech spa resorts: "Karlovy Vary, Marianske and Frantiskovy Lazne, Teplice, Luhacovice." Below hung "Best Offers" priced from 6,600, 7,950, and 22,950 rubles[1].

An "Order a Tour Online" form was working — name, email, phone, message — protected by an image-based check that also had an audio version: "Enter the number by ear." The news column carried three items all dated 19 July 2013: about possible Bulgarian visas being issued right at the airport, about tour operators' approved flight programs from Nizhny Novgorod for the spring-summer 2013 season, and about the Croatian visa becoming mandatory from 1 July 2013. At the bottom was the copyright line "© Tur-Ekspress-Servis, 2012" and the contractor's credit: "© Web Consulting — website development and support"[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the Nizhny Novgorod site directory on nn.ru — a rubricator where a line from the regional counter Counter.nn.ru stood next to each address. The firm's entry sat in the category "Firms (Enterprises): Tourism, Hotels, Boarding Houses: Travel Agencies"[4]. The directory description was self-submitted by the firm: "Travel agency. Comprehensive tourist service in Nizhny Novgorod. Affordable prices, reliable tours" — the typo is preserved from the original[3].

In the rubricator's summary of the most popular resources dated 25 July 2002, "Tur-ekspress-servis" ranked 66th with 199 referrals from the directory and a rating of 124[3]. Its figures then declined: in the travel agencies category on 30 July 2003 the site had a rating of 80 — fifteenth place among the eighteen rated sites in the category (the category listed 25 addresses in total). For comparison, the list was then headed by "Magazin goryashchikh putyovok" (Last-Minute Deals Shop) with 1,440, while "Tur-ekspress-servis"'s nearest neighbors had 88 and 78[4]. By mid-September of that year the counter showed the firm at 50[5], and a day later at 39[6]. In other words, within a fairly crowded group of Nizhny Novgorod travel agencies, the site held to the lower half of the list. More on the counter itself and on how it reconstructs the picture of the era — in the article "Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating."

In the surviving tally of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day 2004 voting results, the domain tyrservis.ru does not appear[7]: in the competition that then served as the measure of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, the firm either did not take part or received no votes that made it into the published summary.

How it closed

The exact closing date cannot be reconstructed from our materials: only one substantive snapshot survives, from July 2013. In all, the web archive accessed the address 78 times, the last time on 18 December 2024[8]. In our register of Nizhny Novgorod domains the address is marked as empty: in place of the agency's site, a placeholder page was being served. Thus tyrservis.ru lived online for at least twelve years — from early 2002, when the firm was already listed in the nn.ru directory, to at least the summer of 2013 — and is remembered by a single home-page snapshot and a handful of lines from the city rating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — List of site snapshots in the web archive (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory: popular resources, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory: travel agencies, July 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory: travel agencies, September 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory: travel agencies, September 2003 (sorted by date added) (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — Home page, 2024 (last snapshot) (archive)