With a brief friendly tourist – Newspaper Kommersant No. 58 (7503) of 04/05/2023

After the collapse of inbound tourism due to the pandemic and the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the interest of foreign travelers in Russia began to slowly recover. Tour operators and booking systems record an increase in the number of requests for trips to the country, coming mainly from China, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and other “friendly” countries. Despite the positive trend, market participants are not expecting a miracle: the number of inbound trips to Russia this year will obviously be incomparable with the figures for 2019.

Activity has begun to recover in the inbound tourism market, Intourist representative Daria Domostroeva told Kommersant, adding that now applications are received daily from travelers from China, Iran, individual guests from the Middle East and Europe. “There was a failure in inbound tourism last year,” she says. Dmitry Gorin, vice-president of the Russian Union of Travel Industry, believes that there is now a small flow from all 34 countries with which Russia has resumed direct flights: these are small groups, individual travelers and business tourists.

Although the expert calls this flow insignificant, he points out that the situation is definitely better than last year. Alexander Lvov, deputy chairman of the board of the World Without Borders Association, notes that small groups of Chinese tourists come to Russia to apply for individual visas. The activity, according to the expert, is higher than last year, when there was no entry flow in principle, but significantly lower than the level of 2019. The entry flow began to grow at a slow pace, confirms Alla Gordienko, head of the visa and migration department of Continent Express.

The pandemic and hostilities in Ukraine have led to a virtual halt in inbound tourism in the Russian Federation. Last year, according to the FSB Border Service, 200.1 thousand foreigners visited Russia for tourism purposes. This is almost a third less than in 2021 and 25.5 times behind the value of the pre-crisis 2019. The market noted that Russia continued to be visited by foreign guests who came for personal purposes, and a small number of classic tourists from the countries of the post-Soviet space.

The data of the hotel market also speaks about the slow recovery of the foreign tourist flow. According to Travelline estimates, in January-March of this year, foreign tourists booked 49.4% more rooms in Moscow than a year ago, in St. Petersburg – by 34.3%.

But they accounted for only 7.3% and 4.3%, respectively, of total bookings in the first quarter. Ostrovok.ru data indicates that in March of this year, 2.2 times more bookings were made on the resource in Moscow from abroad, in St. Petersburg – by 90%. It was, in particular, about users from Belarus, Turkey, India, Kazakhstan, UAE.

An important factor in the gradual restoration of the incoming flow to the country was the resumption of air communication with China, whose citizens traditionally led in terms of the number of trips to Russia.

Alla Gordienko draws attention to the fact that in the business travel market, guests from China now form 70% of the flow, followed by citizens of India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey. These directions, according to her, are gradually replacing the UK, the EU countries and the USA in the market, the flow of which fell sharply last year. Alina Protsenko, head of the Aeroclub’s visa support department, points out that 23% of visa invitations issued by the company this year were for tourists, 77% for business. Most often it was about clients from Turkey, China and Egypt, she notes.

Among the factors contributing to the growth of inbound tourism, Ms. Gordienko names visa exemptions: the opportunity to issue visas for up to six months that appeared in 2021, a simplified procedure launched this year for citizens of 19 states, agreements on visa-free group trips.

But the market does not expect a miracle. Alla Gordienko expects to increase the inflow into the country this year by only 10%, while Dmitry Gorin assumes that it will still be 90% lower than the pre-crisis 2019 level

The expert draws attention to the continuing restrictions on air travel with most countries, the difficulties with working with foreign bank cards in Russia, and the fact that a visa-free group tourist exchange with China has not yet been launched.

Alexandra Mertsalova