 |
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Russians demonstrate their desire to travel Recently released reports further indicate the growing importance of the Russian outbound tourism market. Despite a slight reduction in the number of trips abroad in 2001 to 17.94 million eagerly awaited statistics for 2002 should indicate further increases. Whilst many try to estimate the number of Russians travelling it is important not to forget their expenditure during those trips. In Finland for example the average Russian spends EUR.114 a day which is more than double that spent by his European counterpart. Total spending abroad reached $.7.4 million in 2000. Encouraging news comes from many directions. Visa International in Russia recently announced that they had issued more than 4 million Visa cards to Russian clients and that the spending through the cards was expected to exceeded $.7 billion per year. The report also indicated that the word 'Visa' is associated with travelling abroad and that this is now more convenient to do with plastic cards. The OECD also expects Russia to sustain robust economic growth with increased investments and private consumption continuing to be strong due to a further rise in disposable income. Passenger air traffic from Russia also increased in 2002 with a growth of 8% with more than 27 million passengers passing through Russian airports for International flights. Finally The World Tourism organisation has revised its predictions for Russia. According to WTS's experts, by the year 2020 Russia will rank 5th amongst the European countries in populariry behind France, Spain, Great Britain and Italy.  |
