France expects to return to the pre-crisis tourist flow from Russia in 2017

“France expects to host a pre-crisis number of tourists from Russia in 2017”, - said Inessa Korotkova, the Head of French representative office of the Agency for the Development of Tourism (Atout France) in Russia and the CIS. "You know that after 2014 the Russian tourism to Europe has seriously fallen, but already in 2016 we noticed a revival - the number of Russian tourists reached 600 thousand. This year we see a significant jump of tourist flow to France from all markets, but Russia shows the largest growth for January-October period among all countries. And I think that by the end of 2017 we will return to pre-crisis figures", - she added. "Of course, Paris is the first destination for Russians, on the second place is Cote d'Azur, on the third is Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, where there are many ski resorts. As a result of the past winter season, the number of Russian tourists here has increased by 18% (mainly alpine skiers)", - underlined a representative of Atout France. She stressed that France attracts skiers first of all by large areas of skiing.