News Flash
According to the latest statistics from Rostourism, 34% more Russians travelled abroad in the first 9 months of 2010 than in 2009. This is also 9.2% increase compared to the same period in 2008, which is considered to be the benchmark for the Russian outbound travel. In absolute figures, 9.8 Million Russians travelled abroad for leisure purposes, and almost 1 million for business (+2%). In total, 12% more Russians went abroad from Jan - Sept 2010, than in 2009.
The leading destination in terms of the total number of arrivals is Turkey, with over 2 million Russians visiting the country in the first 9 months of 2010, which is 26% more than in 2009 and 9% more than in the same period of 2008. Turkey accounts for 22% of the outbound market from Russia, which is the same proportion as in 2008.
In 2nd place is Egypt which received 1,495,800 Russian tourists from Jan-Sept 2010. This is 50% increase compared to last year, and 56% more than in 2008. According to Rostourism, Egypt accounts for 15% of the overall outbound travel market and is now the no. 1 source market for Egypt. However, according the Egyptian tourism statistics, they expect between 2.5-3 million Russian tourists to have visited the country by the end of 2010, including the New Year holidays when Egypt is very popular.
Egypt is followed by China which had a 41% increase in Russian leisure traffic, but lost 22% of its business traffic. Even though the figures are impressive, figures to China still show a decrease, compared with 2008. In 4th place is Finland with half a million Leisure arrivals, which is a 16.5% increase on visitor numbers from 2009 but 3% less than in 2008. Finland is followed by Italy with 360,000 arrivals and 34% growth (+11% compared to 2008).
Among other destinations in the Top 10 are Greece, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates.
The record percentage growth was registered by Thailand, with a 110% more Russians visiting the country in the first 9 months of 2010 compared to the same period of 2009. The destination with the record growth against its 2008 benchmark is Israel with an increase of +40% compared to 2009 and +128% compared to 2008. With a total of 124,000 arrivals from Russia, Israel is in 16th place in terms of destinations. However, one should note that these figures are much lower than the ones quoted by the National Tourism Boards: for e.g., Israel NTO registered 570,000 Russians visitors in 2010.
The destinations with negative growth rates, according to Rostourism are: Romania (-4%), Norway (-7%), the Philippines (-15%) and Slovakia (-73%). Even though the majority of the countries received a substantial increase in growth, which reflects a growing market place, this does not necessarily means that Tour operators are benefiting from this expansion, as the closure of the Capital Tours, (Russia's 7th largest Tour operators) has demonstrated. This is mainly due to the market structure, which has too many tour operators for the markets total size. Due to the high degree of competition, price damping has been used to win market share and this has put significant financial pressure on some of the larger Tour operators, making 2010 even more difficult than in 2009.
Source: Rostourism, December 2010