Tourists from which countries continue to travel to Russia despite the SVO
In 2022, after the end of quarantine restrictions, the outbound tourism market showed an increase of 20%, reaching a volume of 9,5 million people. At the same time, inbound tourism to Russia decreased by 95% to 180 thousand people.
Director of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) Maya Lomidze announced this at a web conference in NSN, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Of course, the number one direction is Turkey, which is almost close to the indicators of the record year 2019. Let me remind you that Turkey has 5,3 million tourists, and the potential demand for Turkey was higher than tour operators could satisfy, because there was a shortage of transportation. This, in fact, is one of those problems that has significantly affected all outbound tourism.
But, paradoxically, the shortage of transportation has its advantages - there was no dumping. Accordingly, to some extent this stabilized the market, that is, there was no competition, and for the first time, probably in the last 25 years, cooperation arose between market participants to work in certain areas,” Lomidze emphasized.
The United Arab Emirates is in second place with 1 million tourists, which is significantly lower than Turkish volumes. Egypt doesn’t even reach 1 million, including New Year’s sales, where, according to ATOR data, 850 thousand Russians vacationed. Thailand received another 410 thousand.
As for inbound tourism, the organized segment of classic tourists fell by 95% compared to 2021, which was also not rosy for inbound tourism. However, among foreign countries there has been an interest in traveling to Russia, which should be strengthened with an electronic visa and a “tourist card”, which allows you to transfer a certain amount of money for vacation and not worry about the non-functioning Visa system.
“The leaders look rather unexpected - these are Germany, Iran and Türkiye. There is very great interest from India, and St. Petersburg is already building bridges with India as a flagship or an icebreaker, because it is potentially a very interesting market, and there is interest in Russia.
We hope that next year India and other countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia will be able to travel under a more simplified scheme thanks to the electronic visa system,” Lomidze noted. - Of course, this is very much missed. Because these are consumers of not only hotel services, but also shopping, especially when we are talking about tourists from the Middle East and Asia. These include restaurants and a completely different average bill for staying in Russia.”
According to the director of ATOR, in general, the outgoing year is characterized by a failure in inbound tourism and positive dynamics in domestic tourism.
“That is, in general, the tourism industry in 2022, despite another shock, another serious blow, developed quite steadily, and people did not refuse the services of the entire chain of tourism business.
However, we believe that this was largely due to the general economic situation in the country, and in order to make any forecasts for 2023, of course, we would like there to be fewer uncertainty factors. There are too many of them now.”
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