Staff Report
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as a key source of Russian tourism. Back in 2019, Russian tourism from the UAE was to a negligible level as only 23,000 visitors travelled to Russia.
But things have changed very fast as by the end of 2024, as many as 65,300 UAE tourists had visited Russia. That’s a 2.8x higher from 2019 and a made a jump of 53.6% from 2023.
Tourism in Russia is making a comeback. According to data from the Border Service of the Federal Security Service of Russia, as many as 1.57 million foreign tourists have visited the country in 2024.
These numbers of visitors have shown that the figures are more than double the 670,700 visitors who visited Russia in 2023.
The pre-pandemic figures of tourists in 2019 stood at over 5 million who flocked to Russia.
After a sharp decline in 2022, foreign visits have started going up again in 2023. Business travel has been the real driver. Many foreigners entered Russia for work.
And even those labeled as “tourists” had often business on their agenda. Experts have said that the majority of visitors in 2023 had visited Russia for business rather than pleasure.
Fast forward to 2024, and we finally see a shift. Leisure tourism is bouncing back in a big way. The stats say it all: 1.57 million people came purely for tourism, while business travel only brought in 611,500 visitors—2.5 times fewer. That’s a clear sign that Russia’s travel industry is regaining some of its lost charm.
However, business tourism has been slowing down. In 2024, the number of business travelers hardly jumped up by 1% compared to the previous year.
Where Are These Tourists Coming From?
China has taken a lead. In 2024, 848,000 Chinese tourists visited Russia, accounting for half of all leisure travelers. That’s a massive 4.2x jump from 2023 as only 200,000 visited at that time. China had sent around 1.5 million tourists to Russia in 2019.
Germany holds second place as 65,800 visitors visited in 2024 up 21.2% compared to the previous year.
Before the pandemic, Germany has been a key source of Russian tourism. It had sent 522,000 visitors in 2019 but this number had dropped now.
Turkey also ranked fourth with 58,500 visitors in 2024 that is up 23.2% from the previous year. Though many Turkish travelers visited for business purposes but they also travelled for sightseeing, food, and culture. Interestingly, Turkish visitor numbers have now surpassed pre-pandemic levels by 7,000 trips.
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