Almost a million Russian tourists visited the UAE in 2017

“About 995 thousand Russian tourists visited the UAE in 2017, which is 108% more than a year ago”, - said the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Russia Maaded Khareb al-Hayly. "The number of visitors from Russia has more than doubled primarily due to the simplification of the visa regime. As a comparison, in 2016 480,000 Russians visited the country", - he added. The ambassador noted that there are no forecasts on the tourist flow from Russia for the current year, but he expressed confidence that it will continue to grow further. Earlier it was reported that the most popular emirate of the UAE is Dubai. In 2017 it was visited by 530 thousand Russian tourists, which is 121% more than a year earlier. The total tourist flow to this emirate amounted 15.8 million people. At the same time, the Dubai authorities set the goal to host 20 million tourists in 2020. Since February 2017 the Russians can receive UAE visas free of charge upon arrival for a period of 30 days with the possibility of extending it for another 30 days.