Russians have chosen their TOP-10 New Year destinations

The TOP-10 countries for New Year holidays of 2013 include Russia, Baltic countries, Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and Thailand. Analytics of an online-booking service Oktogo.ru are noting that December sales of New Year tours are rather slow. There are several reasons for that: most of the citizens have already decided where to spend their holidays, and the remaining tours are usually rather expensive.

The list of most popular winter destinations hasn’t changed much, compared to last year. About 20% of the tourists decided to book a hotel in Russia. Estonia received about 12% of the bookings. The third place with 10% is divided between equally popular Finland and Latvia. Lithuania, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy and Thailand are also in the TOP-10. Each of these countries received about 4% of overall bookings of Oktogo.ru.

“It’s not the first year that the TOP-10 looks this way. The reason for this is that most Russians want to save money on flights. Yet the number of popular countries keeps growing every year: for instance we now have hotel bookings for New Year holidays in over 70 countries. That is 30% more than during last year”, - says Olga Favarizova, Head of the Support at Oktago.ru According to the booking service, most Russians order rooms either for one night or for three nights. That means the overall duration of the trip is 2-4 days. That applies to Russia, Finland and Baltic countries. Germany and the Czech Republic take a little longer: 6-8 days. Thailand, Italy, Spain, Mexico and the Dominican Republic are usually booked for the whole duration of the winter holidays. Most Russians prefer to start their winter holiday trips on 2-3 January.

If we look at Russia, Saint-Petersburg is definitely the most popular destination for our citizens 51% of bookings, Moscow is lagging behind with only 26% of booking. The rest of the bookings are in historical cities of the North-West, the Central region and in the Urals. The Baltic region shows active bookings in capital cities – Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. Finland’s most popular destination is Helsinki, yet some tourists plan to go to Espoo, Lappeenranta and Rovaniemi.

The most expensive holidays will be the ones in Finland – an average price for a night at a hotel is about €95. Then come Russia and Estonia (€85 per night), Latvia (€70) and Lithuania (€52). In Russia the most expensive trip is to Moscow, it costs about €673. The cheapest trip is to Perm – tourist will spend less than €8 on accommodation. The most expensive booking abroad is in Thailand, Krabi Province (more than €4100), and the cheapest accommodation overseas is in Kathmandu – only €8.

Less than 10% of Russians spend their New Year holidays traveling. And of those who do, most are from big cities like Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Kazan. Convenient flights are a big issue to people who are arranging the tours themselves. Half the people who are going on vacation during the winter holidays prefer to buy a package tour to some beach destination. The other half takes matters into their own hands and organizes the trips by themselves. Mostly it’s excursion tours of European cities or skiing vacations is alpine resorts.