Europe lost 9% of Russian tourist flow

In the first half of the current year, the overall outbound flow from Russia has dropped by 9%: 21 million 614.5 thousand departures this year compared to 23 million 722.3 thousand in the same period in 2013.

The number of tourist departures has gone down, too – by just 3%: 8 million 293 thousand this year compared to 8 million 522.6 thousand last year. Such a downturn has been recorded for the first time since the crisis year of 2009. However, at that time the year-on-year drop reached as many as 23%.  

In the first half of 2013, China was the only one to drop down. This year, the chart shows many more minuses. However, we can’t tell that Europe as a whole has rolled back because of the exchange rates and sanctions. It is all a bit more mixed up. Germany, Greece, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Austria have gone down, while Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Montenegro, Hungary have shown a slight upturn. Despite numerous visa issues, even the UK received more Russians than a year before.

In order to determine is there an overall downturn in the Russian tourist flow to Europe, we added together all the EU countries figures (excluding Ireland and Luxembourg that are missing from the chart). As it turned out, in the first half of 2013, there had been 9041.9 thousand departures from Russia to Europe, while in the same period in 2014 there were 8817.9 thousand departures – 2.5% less. Speaking of tourist departures: 3419 thousand in 2013 compared to 3119.9 this year. Which means Europe has lost almost 9% of its guests from Russia.

Let’s not take into consideration mysterious run-ups of Finland and Lithuania. These seem to be a calculation error of some sort, which needs adjustment.    

International departures of Russian tourists

January–June 2014 –2009 

(thousand departures)