Outgoing flow fell by 13% for the first half of the year.

“The Russian outcoming flow decreased for the first six months 2016 by 13.1% in comparison to the same period of the last year and amounted 13.2 million trips”, - reported "Interfax" on Thursday September 8 referring to the data of the Federal State Statistics Service (RosStat). According to the Agency, the leader among the popular directions for the first half of the year became Abkhazia (1.5 million trips). It is noted, that this direction was not even mentioned in the Rosstat statistics in 2014, but in the last year surprisingly took the first place. Remarkable, on the second place is Finland with number of 1.26 million trips, on the third is Kazakhstan - 1.25 million. Also in the Top-10 destinations were: Ukraine (816 thousand), China (712 thousand), Estonia (698 thousand), Poland (581 thousand), Germany (468 thousand), Thailand (441 thousand), Spain (321 thousand). The number of countries, which showed growth of incoming Russia tourists, also included Cyprus (+50%), China (+45%), Thailand (+24.2%), Bulgaria (+23.8%), Greece (+22.1%), Georgia (+21.2%), Spain (+14.6%). Decrease of flow is noted in Finland (17%), Kazakhstan (11.5%), Poland (10.6%), Germany (10.5%) and Israel (10.2%). It is interesting that the “RosStat” statistics may not reflect the actual numbers of tourists to these countries. Under the phrase "outcoming tourist trip" the “RosStat” means the trip committed by the Russian citizen "with any main purpose (business trip, vacation or other personal purpose)." Besides, according to experts, most likely, the agency understands any border crossing out of the Russian Federation as outcoming action. It easily explains the high popularity of Abkhazia - the tourists in the Krasnodar region may cross the border of the country several times during vacation by the purpose of one-day excursion. Nevertheless, some data concerning a number of other countries given by “RosStat” are close to the information of the other agencies. For example, “Rosturizm”, referring to the Thai side, previously reported that for the period of six months the number of tourists from Russia to Thailand increased by 22% (according to “RosStat” - 24%).