St. Petersburg is one of the most popular tourist destinations in 2020

OneTwoTrip`s analysts have found out where Russians flew or traveled by train most often. St. Petersburg finds its due position among the most popular destination for both air and rail travel. Together with St. Petersburg, the top ten destinations include Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan, Sochi and Novosibirsk.

It is worth noting that, despite a 70% drop in industry revenues in 2020, tourism support program has managed to recover about 20% of the losses. An information campaign to draw attention to St. Petersburg should play an important role in the subsequent restoration of the tourism sector. In addition, the actively developed and implemented program "New Tourist Geography of St. Petersburg" is bound to help to stimulate repeated visits, make the city attractive in any season, and increase the average number of days of stay and the average check of tourists in the future.

During the pandemic, an additional incentive for domestic tourism and travel to St. Petersburg was the cash back program from Rostourism. While traveling within the country, Russian tourists had the opportunity to receive a refund depending on the cost of the trip. St. Petersburg lost 90% of the international flow of tourists, multiple areas of tourism suffered: business tourism, family and children`s tourism, sports tourism, wellness tourism and so on, but due to the active work of the city authorities and market professionals; due to the demand growth, including the growth of interest in the cash back program from Rostourism, about 20% of the losses were won back in domestic tourism. According to the end results of the second stage of the cash back program, the city is in 5th place in terms of the total cost of bookings.

After the introduction of additional winter holiday restrictions, St. Petersburg turned to Rostourism with a request to extend the cash back program. At the moment, a draft amendment to the abovementioned government decree, regarding the procedure for resuming cash back tours, is under consideration.

We also remind you that St. Petersburg became the first city in Russia to join the international movement to ensure safe tourism and recreation - Safe Travels. In St. Petersburg, new safety standards for travel were developed on the basis of the methodological recommendations of Rospotrebnadzor and then coordinated with the recommendations and international protocols of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Tourism and Travel Council (WTTC)

St. Petersburg is a recognized world tourist center and one of the most popular travel destinations in Russia. In 2019-2020, with the support of the city administration and the Government of the Russian Federation, a number of large-scale projects of the international level were implemented and the tourism industry achieved record economic indicators.

 Tourism industry is the main driver of economic development in St. Petersburg. In 2019, tourists spent 376.8 billion rubles in the city. Tourism is 12% of all exports of St. Petersburg and 44.5% of its non-energy, non-raw materials exports, being the most environmentally friendly export. The employment of the population in the hospitality industry in the low season is more than 100 thousand people, in the high season this figure rises to 300 thousand, and in total, up to 500 thousand people are involved in tourism and related industries during the peak period. Note that in 2019 St. Petersburg was visited by 10.4 million tourists, which is 26.8% higher than the same indicator in 2018.

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