This year Greece is less interested for Russian tourists

The number of tourists from Russia to Thessaloniki declined by 11% - from 26,519 in January-June 2017 to 23,569 for the same period in 2018. It was reported by Greek media with reference to the statistics of the Association of hoteliers of the city. However, according to experts the trend towards a decrease of the interest of Russian tourists concerns all the resorts of the country. "This is not only the northern region of Greece. I think the figures are similar to the situation on the Russian market as a whole. Several reasons are connected with this situation. First, as never before, low prices in Turkey. Secondly, the World Cup had a negative impact on the entire out coming tourism", - said Alexander Tsandekidi, the General Director of Muzenides Travel. The drop of demand for Greece this year is confirmed by large travel agencies. "If you compare the whole summer season - 2018 with the last year's period, the difference in the number of booked tours at the moment is 18%. But in July, the lag of last year's figures is already 30%", - said Maria Leshcheva-Konabeeva, the Marketing and Advertising Director of TBS Group. In her opinion, the situation with fires in Athens at the end of July increased the drop of interest to this country. According to the group of companies "Sletat.ru", the demand for package tours to Greece in July 2018 was 5.10% of on-line search requests. A year ago in the same period such tours were searched in 7.97% of cases. Thus, according to the absolute number of requests, demand decreased by 19%.