Some news about the Russian tourism market, May 2017
Above infographic shows Yandex Statistics growth search for tourism services (ALL sectors) comparing Q1 2016 vs Q1 2017
Summer is fast approaching and the Russian market has begun its yearly shift to Europe and Turkey. Relations have significantly thawed between Turkey and Russia. Turkish airlines as well as charters have restarted a number of direct flights into Russia after being forced out for over two years.
Yandex search service statistics shows that Russians searched for tours 6.3 million times on Yandex in April 2017 as reported by ATOR Russia. This represents 28% search increase compared to April 2016 Leading foreign destinations were Turkey (biggest share with 20% search) followed by Cyprus, Greece.
The Ruble has climbed a few percentage points in value against the US Dollar and Euro over the last year. Currency volatility has reduced which translates into travelers being more confident of their plans. Industry leaders are reporting an increase in depth of bookings but last minute still remains the norm.
Sletat.ru and TripAdvisor launched a joint project for the tourists. Now the millions of reviews about hotels from TripAdvisor are available on Sletat.ru web site as of 2017 (Sletat.ru is an OTA however prices are provided by tour operators, mostly as packages)
