Lacking Europeans, Russia Courts Asian Tourists

(St. Petersburg) Farewell Europeans, welcome Chinese tourists: two and a half years after the Russian offensive in Ukraine that abruptly stopped the flow of Western tourists to Russia, the country is trying to replace them with tourists from Asia, starting with China, and the Middle East.

In St. Petersburg, the former imperial capital with its many palaces and romantic canals, the change from the pre-war situation is striking.

Before, in this city founded by Peter the Great, the most European of the tsars, “we mostly heard English, French or Italian spoken” and “we were always full, no matter the season”, underlines Alexandra Kulikova, co-owner of a chain of tourist rentals, which includes apartments with breathtaking views of the imposing Saint Isaac’s Cathedral.

Now, “I see a lot of Chinese groups, Arabs traveling with their families, Indian tourists […]. But they must be very rich people, because they stay in luxury hotels, not apartments,” she laments.

In fact, the sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, which led to the suspension of direct flights between these countries and Russia and the impossibility of paying for purchases with Visa or Mastercard bank cards, have precipitated “a reorganization (of international tourism) towards the East”, explains Sergei Kalinin, head of the association of guides and interpreters of Saint Petersburg.

A shift visible in the figures: in the first quarter of 2024, of the approximately 218,000 foreign tourists who came to Russia, almost half (99,000) came from China, followed distantly by those from Turkey (12,500), the United Arab Emirates (7,300), Saudi Arabia (6,000) and Iran (4,600), according to the Russian Tour Operators Association.

So many countries have not condemned the conflict in Ukraine and have remained on good terms with Moscow.

“Much in common”

There is also a change at the Saint Petersburg station: on summer evenings, groups of tourists, many of them Chinese, rush to catch a night train leaving for Moscow, the second and final stage of their discovery of Russia.

“Russia is an interesting country, and now it’s easier to get there, there are electronic visas,” Liu Itin, 60, told AFP, pulling a large yellow suitcase.

Through his group’s guide who acts as his interpreter, he explains that he “loves to travel: there are many tourist sites in Russia, and our countries have a lot in common.”

While Western governments advise their nationals against traveling to Russia, the rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing since 2022 has, on the contrary, favored the growth of Chinese tourism.

Thanks to “the friendship between Russia and China”, “there are many Chinese who want to visit Moscow”, confirms Sia Kossionai, a young Chinese guide, showing the immense Red Square with the Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Lenin’s Mausoleum and the Kremlin domes to a group of 23 tourists from Shanghai.

“They only know Russia from television,” she says. “Because of the war in Ukraine, they are a little afraid (before leaving). But everything is fine” once in Russia, she adds.

Miss to win

To support the tourism sector, Moscow is trying to facilitate travel from “friendly” countries.

Russia is now “paying more attention to the development of visa-free regimes with the countries of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, to the digitalization of the mechanism of visa-free group exchanges with China and Iran, and to the increase in direct flights” with these countries, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development emphasizes on its website.

The municipality of St. Petersburg is also increasing promotional operations in these regions. In May, its officials went to present their city in the Chinese metropolises of Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, after having participated in February in the major South Asia’s Travel and Tourism Exchange fair in Delhi.

In total, the city plans to participate in some 16 trade fairs this year, in Asia, the Middle East and the countries of the former USSR, according to the municipality’s website.

But despite these efforts, many tourism professionals deplore a big loss of earnings.

“It’s not like before,” says Maria Khilkova, a tour guide in St. Petersburg. Despite the Chinese, the tourist flow “is incomparable with what it was before COVID-19,” she laments.

According to the municipality, foreign tourists accounted for only 6% of the approximately nine million tourists to St. Petersburg in 2023, compared to 50% before the pandemic.

“I am not very optimistic,” says Maria Khilkova. “It will take at least five years to return to the previous level.”