According to the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Border Service of the Federal Security Service, there has been a significant drop in the number of crossings of the Russian-Finnish and Russian-Estonian borders during the first quarter of 2014. At the same time, the prolonged May holidays can once again cause ‘tie-ups’ at the border.
Russians have cut back on shopping trips to Finland. Last year they spent less money shopping, and what little they did spend, they spent very cautiously. These are the findings of a research conducted by a financial center, reports the TRN correspondent.
It is hoped in Suomi that the economic crisis will not affect the number of Russian tourists visiting Finland’s regions for the traditional holidays and shopping. The Finns are willing to ease the border regime and increase the number of trips of the speed train ‘Allegro’.
Travel Russian News magazine and Superjob.ru are ready to present the results of another joint research aimed at determining the attitude of Russians to a wide-spread tour operator service – early booking, and also at finding out which countries are often booked in advance.
It is no secret that Russian tourism statistics are far from perfect and can only be described as confounding. For instance, Rosstat puts the number of ‘pure’ tourists who visited Russia in 2012 at a mere 2.57 million, while according to the St. Petersburg authorities’ measurements, 3 million foreigners came to the city during the same year.
According to the analysis of the internet searches for summer holiday programs
The most sought-after outbound destinations from January to September were Turkey (2.7 million people,+20%), Egypt (1.4 million people,+17%), Greece (1.1 million,+69%), Spain (887.1 thousand,+29%), China (787.2 thousand,-20%), Finland (787.1 thousand,+102%), Thailand (683 thousand,+23%), Germany (638.1 thousand,+20%), Italy (605.5 thousand,+31%).
The meeting on partnership expansion between the Suomen Valtion Rautatiet (Finnish Railways) management representatives and tourist agents of St. Petersburg brought little result. ‘New opportunities for tourism’, which was the name of the meeting, were nowhere to be heard.