Russian Tourists Prefer the Countries Offering Sea Rest - RMAA Travel Report

MOSCOW, February 7, 2019 (Newswire.com) - ​Every year about 40 million Russians travel abroad, according to report “Comprehensive research of the Russian tourism market: everything you need to know when you plan to attract Russian tourists.” These data include not only tourist trips, but all trips in general.

Russians often go to the countries bordering with Russia such as Finland, China, Poland on business trips, and they also go to the countries of the former USSR (Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Georgia) to visit their relatives and friends.

Turkey was the leader of Russia's favourite tourism destinations in 2017-2018. In 2018, about 6 million Russian tourists visited Turkey. 

Top 15 countries in terms of leaving Russian abroad (excluding CIS region) (Source: Federal State Statistics Service)

In 2019, according to Romir research statistics 36%, Russian tourists are going to have a vacation on the seaside.

The impact of international relations on the tourist flow

International relations can have a great impact on the tourist flow. The Russian SU-25 was shot at the border of Syria and Turkey on November 24, 2015, causing deterioration in relations between Russia and Turkey. From November 25, 2015, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Federal Agency for Tourism recommended Russian tour operators to suspend the sale of the package tours to Turkey, and from January 1, 2016, the visa-free travels to Turkey were suspended. In 2016, only 797 thousand Russian tourists visited Turkey.

After June 2016, when the President of Turkey expressed regret at the incident and placed emphasis on the readiness to do his best for restoration of the traditionally friendly relations between countries, the relations between Russia and Turkey began to improve. According to the website Regnum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that relations between Turkey and Russia have been fully restored, which had an immediate impact on the tourism market.

Turkey is popular with Russian tourists because it’s a cheap place to rest.

How tourism ministries advertise in Russia

Tourism ministries are conservative in the choice of advertising channels and prefer to place advertising on TV, radio and print media.

The aggregate investments in advertising in offline channels of the tourism ministries amounted to almost $34.3 million from 2014 to 2017.

 Sample budgets of the countries investing in offline advertising, thousand $ (Source: Media Scope, 2018)

Learn more about Russian outbound tourism market and how different countries advertise in Russia from our free research “Comprehensive research of the Russian tourism market: everything you need to know when you plan to attract Russian tourists.”

​​About the company

RMAA Travel is a Travel Marketing agency whose mission is to make it easy for global travel and tourism brands to access the Russian outbound travel market. We help destinations, tourism boards, airlines and hotels to reach Russian travelers. We are experts in travel communications and marketing in Russia and the CIS. RMAA Travel enables Russian advertising, media, marketing and PR services to build its clients’ brands, drive sales, and increase brand share in one of the largest outbound travel markets. As an integrated travel marketing agency, we provide whatever service is needed to deliver the right solution - whether it is brand development for the Russian tourist, consumer research, destination marketing through to social media campaigns, influencer campaigns, digital advertising, traditional ads like TV, Out of Home and media buying. We work with world-class travel brands like Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Morocco and China, and many others to advise, build and execute travel marketing strategies.

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Source: RMAA Travel