Moscow, being the most popular travel destination in Russia, earns a lot of money on tourists every year. Street festivals are the main attraction and the reason for an increase in the tourist flow and turnover in the last years, officials assert.

Moscow earned USD 10 billion on tourists in 2017

Over 21 million people visited the Russian capital in 2017. This allowed the city to earn approximately 600 billion rubles (USD $10.6 billion).

Natalya Sergunina, the Deputy Mayor of Moscow, who is responsible for issues of the economic policy, property and land, believes that tourism revenues will keep rising. “In the coming years the earnings from tourism will be increasing”, Sergunina stated, as confirmed by Mos.ru.

Street festivals pay off

The Russian capital hosts regular street festivals since 2016. The celebrations are organized under the general title “Moscow seasons”.

Themes are determined depending on the season:

• Journey to Christmas
• Golden fall
• Spring in Moscow

Sergey Sobyanin, the Mayor of the capital of Russia, assessed the earnings from the festivals at 60 billion rubles (USD $1.1 billion), Moslenta reported.

According to Sobyanin, the festivals assisted in bringing tourist flows of tens of millions of people. Thus, there is also 20-30% increase in turnover of local shops, cafes and restaurants.

As we reported last year, in 2016 Moscow welcomes 17.5 million tourists. It’s an increase of 3.5 million people who visited the city or by 20% in just one year.

International tourism

The growth in a great extent is due to local tourism. The number of foreign tourists is also on the rise but it’s still way behind the top-40 most popular cities in the world.

For instance, Bangkok and London welcomed over 19 million international travelers in 2016, according to September 2017 report by Mastercard, which put these destinations on top of the world’s most popular cities list.

Moscow is not in the top-20 worldwide, nor even in the top-10 in Europe.

The most popular European destinations are:

1. London: 19.06 million of foreign travelers annually
2. Paris: 15.4
3. Istanbul: 9.1
4. Barcelona: 8.3
5. Amsterdam: 8.3
6. Milan: 8.1
7. Rome: 7.1
8. Vienna: 6.4
9. Prague: 6.1
10. Dublin: 5.5

Bucharest became the fastest growing destination by international overnight visitors in Europe, having increased the volume of tourists by 10.4% in 2009-2016. In comparison, the numbers of international visitors staying overnight in Moscow increased by 8.2% during the same period.

For comparison, New York is the most visited city in the USA with 17 million foreign travelers a year.

According to List Challenges, the Russian capital is #26 on the list of most popular destinations with about 14% of respondents ticking it on their lists of the cities they visited. It’s positioned next to Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Is it safe to travel to Moscow?

Moscow is one of the safest cities in Russia to travel to.

• In 2018, the city is hosting the World Soccer Cup. The FIFA World Cup events begin on 14 June and end on 15 July 2018. The Cup is played every 4 years.
• The Cup’s games will be also played in Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Sochi, Kazan, Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Saransk, Samara.
• It is expected the number of foreign tourists to Russia will rise this year due to the popularity of the Cup.

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