Due to the lack of destinations available for direct flights, Sri Lanka turned out to be very popular among Russian tourists. For some tour operators, the resort entered the TOP-5 holiday destinations with a share of 10-15% of the total sales of the New Year.
“Sri Lanka this year entered the TOP-5 destinations for New Year's tours and takes the 4 place behind Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. If we compare the New Year period of the past two years, then Sri Lanka was not among the TOP-5 countries for foreign holidays,” Anex Tour specialists say.
In addition, there is a significant increase of purchases of Sri Lanka as for the past two years there has not been such an extensive charter program to the country. From 2022, tourists can get there by direct Aeroflot and Red Wings flights. Also there are Azur Air charters, including departures from the regions.
“In 2019, we didn’t have blocks. Nowadays, we offer flights 2 times a week and, naturally, because of this, sales are much higher,” Fun&Sun reports.
But tourists get to the island not only by direct flights from Russia. A significant share is sales of tours on foreign airlines - in particular, flydubai, whose flights are available from many regions of the Russian Federation.
However, market participants note an increase of the cost of flights to Colombo compared to the pre-Covid period. The increase of the cost of air travel by 30% is also confirmed by Coral Travel, while the price of hotels remained at the level of 2019.
Due to duration and high cost of the flights, tours to Sri Lanka are bought for an average of 10-12 days, less often - for a week or two.
Another trend of Sri Lanka this year is the growing demand for high-class hotels. “The significant share of booked accommodation is 4* and 5* hotels on the first line in the south and south-west areas of the island (resorts of Hikkaduwa, Unawatuna, Weligama, Tangalle)," Russian Express stated.
In Anex Tour, 4-5* hotels accounted for 51% of all New Year's requests.
