Lake Como, also known as Lario, is the third-largest lake of glacial origin in northern Italy, at over 400 metres deep. Lake Como is well known worldwide for its villas by the shore, the away-from-it-all little villages and the snow-capped mountainous hinterland. The most visited spot is the city of Como, located on the lake’s western branch: with tourists coming from all over the world to visit the Lake and its surroundings, short-term holiday rentals have become extremely popular.

Independent Russian travelers named the countries in which they like to return most of all, Turkey was the leader.

In 2020, after the new rules came into force, Russian tourists traveling to Italy will be able to count on receiving five-year Schengen visas.

Turkey has become an almost year-round holiday destination for Russians. By the end of the year the country will host about 6 million Russians.

ATOR has announced preliminary results of 2019 based on the statistics for the three quarters of this year.

Tourists, independently traveling abroad for the New Year’s date, favor this year Germany, Italy and Thailand. The TOP-5 also includes Spain and France.

With opening of the new charters program to Brindisi, it is planned that more than 4 000 of Tui tourists will be able to have holidays at the resorts of Puglia in the upcoming summer season.

The list of popular destinations for winter holidays from Tez Tour includes China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Thailand, Egypt, Spain, Austria, Italy and Andorra.

For 9 months of this year, Italy showed a significant growth of the number of departures among Russian tourists. In 2019 the destination has increased in volumes by 22,3% for this period.

According to market participants, the volume of sales of ski tours in Italy increased by an average of 15-20% in annual terms. Tour operators see the reasons for this surge in demand both in the changed consumer behavior of Russians and in the expanded assortment of tours.

In mid-October tour operators named the most popular destinations for the November holidays. At the peak of popularity are Turkey, the UAE, Cyprus, Italy, Israel, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Cuba.

In the autumn the demand for European destinations such as Greece, Italy and Bulgaria has grown. The demand for autumn holidays in 2019 increased by 26% compared to last year.

S7 Airlines plans to open direct regular flights from Moscow to Milan from December 25, 2019 on the boards of Airbus A320. The flights will begin simultaneously with the start of the ski season.

The tour operator Intourist, a member of the Thomas Cook group, intends to get a large share on the Italian destination in the winter. For the first time, the company launches its own charter flight program to Italy for the winter season 2019/2020. The flights are planned from Moscow to Verona and Rimini.

According to Anex Tour, the winter flight program of the tour operator to the Italian ski resorts will be carried out on the wings of Ural Airlines charter flights. For the first time, Anex Tour takes blocks of seats on these flights.

Summer 2019, most Russian tour operators do not arrange charter flights to Italy, limiting themselves by blocks of seats on regular flights. Charters, as regular, fly only to Rimini, Calabria, and Sicily. Flight programs start in June and are scheduled mainly till October. In the summer of 2019, tour operators fly to 9 Italian airports. The largest volume of transportation is for the beach of Rimini. In addition to Moscow, the list of regional points of departure includes St. Petersburg (Rimini and Catania) and Ekaterinburg (Rimini).

More and more Russian travelers are choosing high-level hotels for the autumn season. This is the conclusion made by the experts of Tez Tour after analysis of bookings on more than 30 destinations for dates from September to mid-October 2019. 

In January-June 2019, citizens of the Russian Federation made 21 212 095 trips abroad. This is 6.67% more than in the same period of the last year. Turkey became the leader of outbound tourism, Italy is growing rapidly and tourist flow to Thailand has slightly decreased.

Italian destination is in revitalization. Airlines launches new flights, tour operators go to the new regions of the country and report on high rates of sales. The Adriatic coast and Rimini remain in the top of summer Italy, as the most budget Italian resorts. Nevertheless, the Russians have already tasted the new regions of Italy not so popular among tourists - the Tyrrhenian coast (Calabria), Sicily, the Riviera di Ulisse, the Sorrento peninsula. 

The PAC Group tour operator completed the flight program from the Rostov Platov Airport in Rimini. The reason, according to tour operators, was the low load of the program. In addition, the location of the new airport reoriented part of the tourists, who previously flew from Rostov, to Krasnodar airport. The situation is deteriorated by quite high prices for holidays in Italy, as reported.