Greece is waiting for a million of Russian tourists in 2018

“As a result of the last year Greece expects to host a million Russian tourists”, - said the Minister of Tourism of the country Elena Kundura at MITT-2018 exhibition. According to her, last year Greece managed to increase the volume of tourist traffic by 9%, increasing it up to 30 million foreign visitors. "Our goal is to provide that tourists come to Greece 365 days a year", - she underlined in her speech. Ms. Kundura also noted that 2018 started successesfully for the country's tourism industry - today we can already speak about 20% increase of the tourist flow in comparison with the same period of 2017. On the one hand, the data of Russian tour operators on early booking program says in favor of optimistic forecasts for the upcoming season - the number of bookings has increased significantly. On the other hand, this does not guarantee success at the end of the season. Observers doubt that Greece will really be able to reach the level of 1 million Russian tourists. In their opinion, the high results of sales before the beginning of the season suggest that the relatively stable ruble exchange rate really ensure the travel expenses. However, for the same reason, it is quite logical to assume that most of those Russians who intend to go to Greece in 2018 have already booked their tours. There is a reasonable question - which reasons will provide increasing of the flow of tourists from Russia in upcoming season? The hopes on a successful sale of last minute tours are not so stable. According to the representatives of the other tourist players, there are a lot of ambitious plans of direct competitors on other beach destinations. In particular, the day before the Minister of Culture and Tourism of Turkey Numan Kurtulmush said that they expect to host about 6 million travelers from Russia, although earlier these forecasts were 1 million less.