Traffic of Chinese tourists to Russia up by 25% yoy in 1H 2019 - travel association

MOSCOW, July 30. /TASS/. Traffic of Chinese tourists to Russia in the first half of 2019 grew by 24.5% year-on-year, the World Without Borders travel association said in a statement on Tuesday. The association unites almost 200 firms working with the Chinese tourist market. Just like in previous years, Moscow and St. Petersburg remain main destinations in Russia for Chinese tourists. The cumulative increase in the number of tourists from China here was almost 43%. In particular, the number of Chinese travelers passing through the border control posts of the northern capital was about 130,000 and in Moscow - 195,000. In the reporting period, a noticeable increase (55%) in number of Chinese tourists was registered in the Irkutsk region, which was visited by 19,000 Chinese guests. The popularity of the Amur region grew by 27% in the first half of the year - almost 30,000 citizens of China visited the area. The Jewish Autonomous Region in Russia Far East was visited by 1,500 Chinese tourists, which is 15% more than a year earlier. A substantial increase in the arrival of Chinese tourists (44%) was recorded at the Tolmachevo Airport in the city of Novosibirsk (15,000). However, some regions, mainly near the border, on the contrary, showed a negative trend. The number of arrivals of Chinese tourists in the Primorsky and Khabarovsk regions in the Fa r East decreased by 13%, trips to the Trans-Baikal Territory fell by 22%, to the Krasnoyarsk region - by 17%. The travel association attributes the decline in tourist traffic in these regions mainly to unsatisfactory infrastructure of the local hospitality industry (lack of equipped checkpoints, insufficient number of accommodation facilities etc.) Read more