Chinese tourists on rise in Russia

Russia’s federal tourism agency forecasts a 15 percent increase in the influx of Chinese tourists in 2013, Rostourism deputy head Dmitry Amunts said while unveiling Russia’s stand at the Beijing International Tourism Expo on Friday. “Last year around 343,000 Chinese tourists visited our country. At the end of this year their number will exceed 400,000,” he told Itar-Tass. “Thus, by the end of 2013 China may rank first by the number of foreign tourists in Russia.” Amunts said by 2015 the mutual tourist flows will grow to 5 million. “Over the past years the flow of tourists from China to Russia has been on the rise. Every year the number of Chinese citizens, who choose Russia as their vacation destination grows by 20 percent. Of course, this is a good factor.” “Russia’s most visited cities by Chinese tourists are Moscow and St. Petersburg. Now we try to show that Russia has not only these cities, we have much interesting,” he said. “We created a special project dubbed Red Tourism to attract Chinese tourists to regions. The project includes several routes connected with the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” Amunts said. “Moreover, Russian and Chinese tour operators are now studying many variants of cooperation, in particular the creation of a joint economy-class hotel network,” he said. “Within the framework of the ongoing Year of Chinese Tourism in Russia over 400 events to attract Chinese tourists to Russia are planned,” Amunts said.