The tourist exchange between China and Russia reached four million trips in 2017

“The mutual tourist flow between China and Russia has amounted about 4 million tourists in 2017”, - said the Ambassador at Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Yevgeniy Tomikhin. "Today we can say that the annual tourist flow in both directions is about 4 million, which is a lot", - he said in Rosturizm at a meeting on the preparation of a new agreement about visa-free group tourist trips between Russia and China. According to the Deputy Head of the department Nikolay Korolev, the number of tourist trips from Russia to China in the first nine months of 2017 reached 1.48 million, which led this direction to the third most popular one (after Turkey and Finland) among Russian travelers. Earlier, the press service of Rosturizm reported that in the list of popular destinations among Chinese tourists traditionally the leading positions hold Moscow, Primorsky Territory and on the third line is St. Petersburg. The participants of the meeting in Rosturizm discussed the simplification of the procedure of mutual group tourist trips between Russia and China within the framework of the corresponding agreement between our countries. In particular, one of the questions was the creating of electronic document management on the borders of countries for the entry and exit of tourist groups. In addition, according to the proposed amendments to the document, the duration of stay of tourist groups during visa-free travel increases from 15 to 21 days and the minimum number of people in the group will be reduced from five to three.