Experts named the most popular winter destinations

This year, the alignment of forces has not changed compared to 2017 - most often Russian tourists request beach tours and only then ski tours. Thus, according to the PR director of the United Network of TBG and Hot Tours, Olga Ivanova, Thailand is the leader among the company's customers, followed by India and Russia. In turn, on the 4th and 5th positions are the Dominican Republic and Vietnam, respectively. Also in the TOP 10 are Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Cuba, the Czech Republic and China. Europe nowadays has a low demand and mostly excursion. Tourists tend to be closer to the sea, or simply want to change location choosing budget options. As we can see, now in the TOP 3 there are countries which have hotels on an “all inclusive” basis or inexpensive street food. At the same time, the expert noted that at the moment the demand for winter trips decreased by about 8%. “In my opinion, this is due to the fact that the tourists were promised to open Egypt, although it’s extremely premature to say that the charters will be launched in the coming month. You should also take into account exchange rate fluctuations, possibility of bankruptcies, because of which some are afraid to book tours in advance with a greater depth. That is a group of factors,” explained Olga Ivanova, adding that some tourists are waiting for last minute tours. The TOP of foreign flights on New Year's holidays included - Bangkok, Prague, Tbilisi and Phuket. Compared with 2017, the average price for flights to these cities increased by 26%, 29%, 33% and 25%, respectively. Also for the upcoming New Year holidays, thourists began to book tickets to Rome, Milan, Barcelona and Berlin. The most popular foreign destinations with departure from Moscow are Prague, Istanbul, Paris, Tel Aviv and Rome. Demand is growing in all directions, but Istanbul is the most - almost 6 times. Experts connect this with normalization of relations with Turkey and increasing of the number of budget flights. At the same time, they note that interest to the country is growing throughout the whole 2018 year. The top ten most popular cities also include Riga, Berlin, Warsaw, Stockholm and Barcelona.