China has overtaken Germany as the top visitor source market to Russia with 1.1 million arrivals last year as recorded by the Border Service of Russia.
Chinese visitors traveling to Russia in tour groups made more than 400,000 trips last year, a 10% y-o-y increase, Russian Federal Agency for Tourism’s director Safonov Oleg Petrovich said at the 3rd Sino-Russian Tourism Panel in Moscow. “While this is already an extremely good result, the
Chinese outbound tourism market to Russia still has plenty of room to grow,” he said.
He thinks Russia should adopt more measures to make Chinese tourists’ visits to Russia more comfortable and enjoyable and offer travel products that target every age group and social level to attract more Chinese visitors.
The Ukraine crisis has soured Russia’s relations with the West and caused a sharp drop in Western visitors since last year. However, the number of visitors to Russia from Asia has maintained steady growth.
The number of Russian visitors to China has dropped last year as a result of the weakening global economy and the decline of the ruble, while the number of Chinese visitors to Russia has rapidly increased to a level that made the visitor traffic volume either way about even, according to China National Tourism Administration’s Moscow director Jianming Liu.
The biggest change in Sino-Russian tourism has been in the visitors’ age range, as Russia is increasingly popular with Chinese young people. Both countries hope visitor arrivals for both China and Russia will grow beyond 5 million trips annually.(Translation by David)
