The results of the first quarter of 2022 showed a trend towards the restoration of incoming tourism to Russia. As the “covid” restrictions were lifted this year, traditional source markets for the Russian tourism industry began to return to Russia: Germany, Turkey, India, the USA, and Italy.
In total, from January to March 2022, 57,7 thousand foreign tourists visited Russia.
According to the statistics of the Border Guard Service of the Russian Federation published in early May, in the first quarter of 2022, 2,8 million people entered Russia with all purposes of visits (not only tourism).
This is still significantly less than before the pandemic (6,4 million in the first quarter of 2019), but already significantly more than at the height of the pandemic. For comparison, from January to March 2021, 1,8 million foreigners came to Russia with various purposes.
The TOP-10 (all purposes of visits) included Ukraine (769 thousand), Uzbekistan (451 thousand), Kazakhstan (348,3 thousand), Tajikistan (333 thousand), Kyrgyzstan (153,6 thousand), Abkhazia (133,8 thousand), Armenia (92,5 thousand), Azerbaijan (62,4 thousand), Belarus (52,1 thousand) and Turkey (36,1 thousand).
In comparison with the pre-pandemic rating, the following countries left TOP-10: China (18,1 thousand visits in the first quarter of 2022), Moldova (28,1 thousand), Estonia (10,1 thousand visits), Finland (7,3 thousand visits) and Poland (5,5 thousand).
Compared to last year, in the first quarter of 2022, the number of foreign tourists (here we already count those trips for which the purpose of the visit is tourism in the statistics of the Border Guard Service) in Russia has increased significantly.
From January to March 2022, foreign tourists visited Russia 57,7 thousand times. This is 4,3 times more than in the first quarter of 2021 (13,4 thousand).
But the results of the first quarter of 2022 are still very far behind the results of the same period of pre-COVID 2019, when 470 000 visits by foreigners were recorded in the first three months.
