From January to March Russia was visited almost 4 times more Chinese tourists than a year ago

“For the period January-March 2017, 58.5 thousand tourists from China arrived Russia by the visa-free group exchange program, which is 3.7 times more than during the same period of the last year”, - reported at the press service of the “World Without Borders” Association. Svetlana Pyatihatka, the Executive Director of the Association, called this growth dynamics as unprecedented, because the beginning of the year is traditionally considered as a low season. "At the beginning of 2016, the growth of flow was 45% against the previous year. Now it is almost 300%. We hope that this dynamics will continue in the second and especially in the third quarter of the year. We can talk about the trend of widening the boundaries of the tourist season”, - she noted. According to the Association "World without Borders", 46% of Chinese tourists, who arrived Russia this year, visited Moscow and St. Petersburg. As a result of 2016, the tourists from PRC firmly held leadership in the field of incoming tourism to Russia. So, according to the Border Service of the Russian Federation, every fourth foreign tourist visited our country was the resident of PRC. At the same time, according to the "World without Borders" data, 760,000 Chinese tourists arrived Russia last year by the visa-free tourist exchange program.