Tunisian authorities have put forward an initiative of imposing a departure tax. Non-residents now have to pay about $17 upon leaving Tunisia.
Despite the losses suffered by tour operators, experts believe that the total tourist flow from Russia to Crimea may well reach last year's results.
Travel season in Abkhazia is not exactly going without a hitch. There had been an upsize in early bookings, but the political situation, as it so often does, undermined the plans, and demand dropped.
CEO of Versa tour operator expects the market conditions to stabilize within the coming weeks. “And if our tourists believe us and understand that they are protected, the situation will take even less to normalize,” he added.
The Russian Ministry of Culture has announced a set of measures for regulating the travel market that it has put together during the recent expert committee meeting. According to Deputy Minister of Culture Alla Manilova, these measures are adequate and do not put pressure on the market, aiming to make it more suited to the modern standards and more transparent.
Just as DSBW analysts predicted a month ago, in July 2014 the demand for excursion tours to Europe grew almost 19% as compared to June. At the same time, prices for excursion tours have dropped a little, about 6%. These are the results of Excursion Tour Index EXDEX for July 2014, which was compiled by the DSBW analysts.
The first part of a series of media tours for Siberian Federal District (representatives of federal and regional mass media) took place on July 11–13. The event aimed to provide an objective outlook for the region in the wake of June’s river flood.
Today, like never before, Crimea has found itself in the global and Russian media spotlight. Travel Russian News magazine keeps its finger on the pulse and delivers the latest news about peninsula’s tourism and the industry’s development prospects and nuances as it is ‘breaking in’ the new Russian region. In this regard, we have initiated a National poll, which was conducted by our partner Superjob.ru. We present to you the poll’s results. Will Russians go to Crimea after all?
Situation is complicated with the Crimean destination. On the one hand, hotels and health resorts of the peninsula are ready for tourists, and Russian tourists themselves are ready and willing to go to Crimea. The only problem – the issue of carriage remains unresolved. Most Russians used to travel to Crimea by train, but now many fear using railroads due to the volatile situation in Ukraine. Russian authorities are hard at work trying to set up some safe and cheap way by which to transport tourists. The success of the tourist season in Crimea hinges on how fast this way will be found. TRN magazine spoke to a number of experts in order to get the full picture.
During the past year a record-high number of tourists visited Spain’s Catalonia, spending record amounts of money for the region. Being one of the main markets for Catalonia, Russia ranked fifth as to the number of arrivals. At the same time, Catalonia is still the most popular Spanish tourist region among Russians.