RUSSIA: Russian Domestic Tourism Grows

Travelers from Russia curbed their spending abroad by 30 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Domestic tourism has seen a 20 percent increase.

Russians spent $35 billion on accommodation, food, entertainment, shopping and service last year, making them the sixth highest spenders. In 2014 they spent 50.3 billion.

Chinese tourists still top the list, spending $292 billion last year, 25 percent more than in 2014.

The US was ranked second with American travelers spending $120 billion abroad. Germans spent $76 billion, Britons - $63 billion and French tourists rounded up the top five with $38 billion spend abroad.

The flow of tourists from Russia shrank 31.1 percent last year with 12.1 million departures, according to the Russian statistics bureau Rosstat.

The decline in the number of tourists from Russia is explained by the weakening of the domestic currency as well as the ban on flights to the most popular destinations – Turkey and Egypt.

The number of Russians visiting Turkey has fallen over 90 percent in the first three months of 2016.

“Over the first four months of last year, 126,690 Russian tourists visited Turkey, and this year - only 12,039 people,” the deputy head of Turkey’s Republican People’s Party, Chetin Osman Budak, told in an interview with a Turkish news channel.

Egypt’s tourism earnings have fallen by nearly $1.3 billion since the Russian plane crash last October.

According to the Russian Tourism Industry Union, Indonesia lost 96 percent of its Russian visitors in 2015, Tunisia saw an 83 percent drop, with travel to the Dominican Republic down 82.5 percent compared to the previous year.

The number of Russian visitors to Greece was down nearly 50 percent. Russian tourist numbers to Bulgaria, Spain and Croatia dropped by 41 percent last year, the data says.

Thailand bucked the trend with an increase in Russian tourists of 13 percent.

Meanwhile, domestic tourism in Russia grew by 20 percent in 2015 with inbound tourism up by 5.3 percent. The Russian Federal Agency for Tourism expects the uptrend to continue this year.

RUSSIA: Red Tourism Attracts Hordes Of Chinese Tourists To Russia

Drawn by its Communist past and a visa-free regime, Chinese tourists are flocking to Russia in droves as it develops new routes touting “red tourism”. Nearly 410,000 Chinese came to Russia last year putting them on top of the list of foreign tourists, according to the federal tourism agency.

Their number has swelled 10 per cent since 2013, when Germans topped the list of overseas visitors. “We had lots of work this summer,” said Viktoria Borgacheva, the head of the association of Chinese interpreters and guides in the city of Saint Petersburg, Russia’s main tourist destination. “I would say our workload has increased 30 per cent since last year,” Borgacheva said.

In the first half of this year alone, more than 200,000 Chinese tourists visited Russia. Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg, the former imperial capital renowned for its world-class museums and luxurious palaces, hosted nearly 26,000 Chinese tourists in 2014. “Saint Petersburg is a beautiful city with a rich history,” said Yong Tang, a 57-year-old tourist from Beijing, as he purchased a bust of Lenin.

“I’m glad I came here.” Experts estimate that between 40,000 and 50,000 Chinese tourists could visit Saint Petersburg this year, the Russian tourism industry union said. But Saint Petersburg’s European flair and its winding canals are not the main attraction for them, according to Russian tourism officials.

Chinese tourists flock to Saint Petersburg chiefly to soak in the city’s turbulent revolutionary history as the scene of three revolutions — one in 1905 and two in 1917 — that precipitated the end of the tsarist era and ushered in the Soviet Union. “While Europeans come to Saint Petersburg above all to admire the old capital and the Hermitage (art museum), Chinese tourists want to see Leningrad and its revolutionary history,” Borgacheva said, referring to Saint Petersburg’s Soviet-era name.

In July Moscow and Beijing officially launched an ambitious “red circuit,” a tourist route tracing the life of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin in four Russian cities. The eight-day journey starts in Moscow, where tourists can gape at hammers and sickles on Soviet-era buildings and in the sprawling metro network. The Russian capital is also the resting place of Lenin, with his body still preserved in a mausoleum on Red Square.

RUSSIA: 34% Fewer Russian Tourists Visiting Europe Than In 2014.

Russia in 2015 has experienced the largest decrease in foreign travel in 15 years, Russian Tourism Industry Union spokeswoman Irina Tyurina said.

From January to September, there has been a 31.4 percent drop in journeys abroad when compared to the same period in 2014, Tyurina said.

Previously, the biggest drop in foreign tourism was 18 percent in 2009.

All foreign countries, except for Lithuania, have shown a negative trend in the number of Russian tourists.

The number of Russians traveling to Lithuania increased 51 percent, but Tyurina referred to this as "a statistics miracle."

There were 34 percent fewer Russian tourists visiting Europe than in 2014 — with Greece, Spain and Croatia experiencing the sharpest drop in Russian tourists.

RUSSIA: Russia Tourism Boosted By Weak Ruble

The weakening of the ruble has helped Russia to attract more tourists.

According to estimates by the Russian Tourism Industry Union, the number of tourists visiting Russia has increased by 13 percent in the first nine months of the year, compared with the same period in 2014.

In total, foreign tourists have made 2.54 million trips to Russia between January and September this year, which is the highest amount since 2008, the report said.

Chinese tourists became the largest group of foreign tourists to Russia in the first nine months of the year, accounting for 22.9 percent of the total amount of foreign travelers visiting Russia, according to data from the Russian Tourism Industry Union.

Germany came in second with 12.6 percent of the total number of visits followed by the U.S. with a 6 percent share and Turkey, accounting for 4.6 percent of the total number of tourists, according to the report.

Vladimir Kantorovich, first vice president of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, attributes the growth of the number of tourists visiting Russia to the weakening of the ruble, which lost more than 40 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of last year.

Russia became a very cheap destination for many tourists, Kantorovich said.

While the number of foreign tourists traveling to Russia is growing, the outbound tourism in Russia has been reeling from the economic recession and the ruble drop.

Since the beginning of the year, the tourist flow from Russia fell by 31.4 percent, Oleg Safonov, the head of Russia's federal tourism agency Rostourism, said.

Apart from the economic causes, the outbound tourism in Russia has been affected by Russia's recent ban on flights to Egypt imposed after the crash of the Russian passenger plane in the Sinai Peninsula as a result of a terrorist attack, as well as the ban on selling package tours to Turkey after the downing of the Russian warplane near the Syrian border.

In addition, Russia will introduce visa requirements for Turkish citizens starting on Jan. 1, 2016 as part of the sanctions against the country, which can have a negative impact in the development of the inbound tourism in Russia.

According to the statistics, Turkey represents a significant growth in the number of tourists going to Russia.

In the first nine months of the year, the number of tourists from Turkey visiting Russia has increased by 15.6 percent, compared with the same period last year, according to data from the Russian Tourism Industry Union.