Ukrainian citizens spend for foreign tours 8 times more than foreign visitors to the country. These facts were given by Anna Romanova, the Chairman of the Ukrainian Subcommittee on Development of Travel industry, Resorts and Recreation.
10 billion shortfall between travel expenditure by foreigners in Ukraine and Ukrainian’s spending abroad
According to the official data of NBU (National Bank of Ukraine), in 2018 Ukrainians spent about 8 billion dollars for tour packages to other countries, Finance.ua reported.
While abroad, Ukrainians made additional cashless transactions of 3.6 billion dollars, which is one billion more than they did in 2017. Providing that cash payments are more popular among Ukrainian citizens, this figure can be safely doubled.
Meanwhile, foreign tourists spent only 1.2 billion dollars for non-cash payments during their stay in Ukraine (compared with the last year figure of 800 million dollars).
“Foreign people are very reluctant to buy tours to Ukraine, because the Ukrainian travel product as such is not developed. Consequently, if some of them want to visit our country, they often do it on their own,” explained Ms. Romanova.
In her words, this implies that expenses of Ukrainian visitors for flights, transfers and hotel reservations amount to cashless payments.
Therefore, travel expenses of Ukrainians are 8-9 times higher than travel expenses of the visitors to the country.
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I’d say it’s two reasons. First, stuff is cheaper in Ukraine so you spend less while you’re there. Second, development (not just for tourist packages) but all forms of development are way less than the west. There isn’t much to spend your money on in Eastern Europe. There’s dance clubs, Churches, Kremlins ect, beach and nature treks. The dance club scene is the only thing that makes money for East Europe and it’s mostly the attraction to the girls. In Ukraine I had no trouble staying on a budget under $10 USD a day. This not taking into account money… Read more »
Well, a little bit surprised to hear the numbers! I could not even image that Ukrainians travel a lot. It really means that they are developing travel industry in a good way. Or maybe it is so because traveling is popular everywhere – in every part of the world.
Not surprising. Some of the most visited countries for vacation purposes are Italy, France, America and Mexico. Eastern European countries are not as popular and the weather is not accommodating and some people do not like to rough it on vacation.