Feature

The main winners and losers of 2011

43 million Russians went abroad in 2011, according to the latest stats from Rostourism. That is an 11% increase compared to 2010. Of these, 14.5 million traveller for leisure purposes (+15%), and 1.4 million for business (+7%). In the leisure segment, Turkey was the leader with 2.6 million Russian arrivals (+13%), followed by China (+4%) and Finland - over 900,000 Russian visitors (+29%). Also in the Top 10 were: Egypt (-34%), Thailand (+195%), Germany (+49%), Spain and Greece (+57% each), Italy (+27%) and UAE (+38%).

The main looser was Egypt, which dropped by 34%, however 1.4 Russians visited the country despite all political turmoil there. Other countries down for the Russian market in 2011 were Tunisia (-19%), Lithuania (also -19% but this contradicts with the figures from the National Tourism Board that reported a good positive growth, Japan (-50%), Jordan (-16%) and Romania (-24%).

The biggest growth of the Russian market was recorded by Thailand (+195%), followed by Estonia (+118%), Slovakia (+106%), Norway and Sweden (100% each). Destinations that more than doubled the amount of Russian tourists they received in 2011, were Greece (+58%), Spain (+57%) and Cuba (+51%).