Monday, September 4 2017 12:09

ArmInfo. Armenia entered the  top 30 countries in terms of the number of foreign tourist trips from  Russia. This is evidenced by the data of the Russian agency TurStat.

Statistics of outbound tourism from Russia for the first 6 months of  2017 from January 1 to June 30 shows that departures from Russia  abroad have grown by almost a third for the first time in four years,  and outbound tourism in 2017 is growing by 20% -30% in all popular  beach and sightseeing destinations in Europe and Southeast Asia.

The number of outbound tourist trips from Russia to Armenia increased  by 37% to 171 thousand in the first six months of 2017, and the total  number of outbound travel tours from Russia amounted to 17 million.

The top 10 foreign countries, popular with Russian tourists in the  first half 2017, were Abkhazia (1,668 thousand trips), Turkey (1,632  thousand), Finland (1,540 thousand), Kazakhstan (1,275), Ukraine (999  thousand), China (947 thousand), Estonia (817 thousand), Poland (589  thousand), Thailand (576 thousand) and Germany (570 thousand).

Agency TurStat also analyzed the statistics of incoming tourism to  Russia for the first 6 months of 2017 from January 1 to June 30, 2017  and compiled a rating of countries for incoming tourism to Russia.   According to TourStat, China for the first time ranked third in the  top ten countries in terms of the number of entry tourist trips to  Russia in the first half of 2017. The total number of entry tourist  trips to Russia for the first 6 months of 2017 decreased by 3% to  10.95 million from 11.28 million for the first 6 months of 2016  according to the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). The  total number of incoming tourist trips of foreigners to Russia was  24.5 million in 2016. Top-10 countries of inbound tourism to Russia  in 2017 in terms of the number of entry tourist trips to Russia in  the first half of 2017 (the first 6 months of 2017) were Ukraine  (3,895 thousand), Kazakhstan (1,536 thousand), China (552 thousand),  Finland (504,000), Azerbaijan (403,000), Poland (381,000), Armenia  (284,000), Uzbekistan (262,000), Moldova (246,000) and Germany  (238,000) .

To note,the number of visits of foreign citizens to Armenia in the  first half of this year exceeded 1.3 million, which is more than the  annual indicator by 24.3%. In TOP-3, the number of entries to Armenia  included citizens of Russia, Georgia and Iran. At the same time,  during the reporting period the number of visits by Russian citizens  increased by 33.7% to 241 thousand. The second place was strengthened  for the citizens of Georgia, the number of visits exceeded 151  thousand, with an increase of 11% per annum. And Iran is topping the  top three, with 89.8 thousand visits, which is 27.4% more than last  year. In particular, in the TOP-10 entered the entrances of US  citizens (17.5 thousand), Ukraine (12.7 thousand), the Philippines  (10.9 thousand), Germany (7.8 thousand), France (7.6 thousand), India  (4.3 thousand) and Poland (4.3 thousand). According to the government  program until 2020, Armenia intends to annually be visited by about 3  million tourists.