Tickets scattered in different directions – Kommersant

Air tickets for the May holidays to the most popular destinations within the Russian Federation have risen in price by an average of 10% year on year, Kommersant found out. However, the most popular foreign flights have generally fallen in price. Kommersant’s interlocutors in airlines explain the trend by the depth of booking that has increased to two weeks and the high base of last year. Nevertheless, experts note that a flight to Turkey is now on average twice as expensive as in 2019, and the growth of tourist flow outside the Russian Federation can contain the weakening of the ruble.

Flights to the most popular tourist destinations in the Russian Federation have risen in price by an average of 7-10% year on year, while flights abroad have generally fallen in price, a Kommersant survey of three ticket aggregators showed. The list of the most popular cities includes Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kaliningrad, Minvody and Yekaterinburg. The cost of one-way tickets was calculated from April 28 to May 11, search and purchase – within a month before departure.

Thus, according to the concurring estimates of Aviasales and OneTwoTrip, flights to Moscow and St. Petersburg from Russian cities during the May holidays increased in price by 9% on average. A ticket to Moscow cost, according to Aviasales, 7.9 thousand rubles, to St. Petersburg – 9.1 thousand rubles, from OneTwoTrip – 6.4 thousand rubles. and 6.6 thousand rubles. respectively. The flight to Kaliningrad cost from 6.9 thousand rubles. up to 11.9 thousand rubles. (plus 11% by 2022). Minvody turned out to be the most popular southern destination for Aviasales: 12.1 thousand rubles. (growth by 10.5%). Tickets to Sochi for both aggregators decreased in price: by 12.5%, to 7.3 thousand rubles, from OneTwoTrip and by 7.5%, to 12.1 thousand, from Aviasales. Among cheaper destinations, OneTwoTrip also highlights Yekaterinburg (6.5 thousand rubles, minus 10%).

Of the foreign destinations, Aviasales is leading in terms of popularity in Istanbul (price reduction by 20%, to 24.6 thousand rubles) and Antalya (down by 36%, to 24.5 thousand rubles). Cheaper tickets to Istanbul in OneTwoTrip amounted to 38%, to 19.5 thousand rubles, tickets to Antalya almost fell in price – to 17 thousand rubles. Flight to Yerevan has risen in price by 5%, up to 20.8 thousand rubles. (and at OneTwoTrip it fell by 27%, to 13 thousand rubles), to Tashkent – also by 5%, to 21 thousand rubles. (OneTwoTrip has a 27% discount, up to 11.6 thousand).

OneTwoTrip has Minsk in the top 5 foreign destinations, 6 thousand rubles. in one direction (plus 3.5%), Aviasales has Baku, which has not changed much in price: 23 thousand rubles. for a ticket. In Ozon.Travel, Israel also got into the foreign top, the cost of tickets in the service is not disclosed, specifying only that, in general, “customers began to spend 1.5 times more on tickets for the May holidays than a year earlier.”

Kommersant’s interlocutors in airlines assess the demand for the May holidays differently. The two companies noted that resort destinations filled up more slowly this year due to shortened holidays and four business days in between. The median selling depth increased from 12 to 16 days, S7 said. In another largest company, they noted that the depth of sales for May in their case increased on flights to the Russian Federation up to 2.5-3 weeks and up to 12-14 days – abroad. “Prices in the annual comparison rose within the framework of inflation,” they assured there.

It is noteworthy that package prices for the traditionally popular Turkey in 2023 increased abnormally. The average price of a tour to Turkey increased by 20–30% over the year, to 226 thousand rubles, while the price for Thailand or the UAE for two is from 150 thousand to 200 thousand rubles. respectively (see Kommersant dated April 26).

According to Kommersant’s source in the aviation industry, the average check for a round-trip flight to Turkey in 2019 was about 20-25 thousand rubles, in 2022 – about 50-60 thousand, now – in the region of 35-40 thousand . rub. Vice-President of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Dmitry Gorin agrees with this assessment and notes that further volumes of tourist flow will directly depend on the pricing policy of airlines and hotels: “Preliminary forecasts for the summer were higher than last year’s prices.” According to another interlocutor in the tourism industry, “there is no pre-pandemic depth of sales” and the prices of tour packages to Turkey for the summer are still forecast with an increase of 10-30%.

If by May 2022 only 44 aircraft were available for foreign transportation in the Russian fleet, says Mr. Gorin, now there are more than 200 of them. Today, five Turkish and eleven Russian airlines fly from eighteen cities of the Russian Federation to five cities in Turkey, Dmitry Gorin notes: this allows expect that this year Turkey will be visited by the same number of tourists from the Russian Federation as in 2022 – 5.2 million people. It will be difficult to reach the planned “pre-pandemic” 6-7 million tourists due to the inflationary rise in the cost of holidays in Turkey, he believes, against the backdrop of “extremely affordable offers in the UAE, Thailand and Egypt.” In the future, Dmitry Gorin expects “price stabilization”: their growth within the Russian Federation and correction in the Turkish direction as traffic grows. On April 29, the Ministry of Transport announced that the number of flights of Russian airlines to Turkey in the summer season of 2023 increased by 1.5 times compared to the summer of 2022.

Aigul Abdullina