tourists Archives

Armenia seeks to attract tourists through wine therapy

October 30, 2016 by administrator

Armenia seeks to attract tourists through wine therapy, also known as enotherapy, the head of the country’s Viticulture and Winemaking Foundation said Friday, October 28, according to Panorama.am.

“The foundation representing all the local winemaking companies has unveiled a new map that will be of great interest among tourists visiting Armenia,” Vahe Jilavyan said on the sidelines of the conference Welcome to Armenia.

“We have included all the winemaking companies and their addresses on the map, mentioning which of them offer tours, tastings and other activities which can be of interest among travelers who arrive in a country with a 6200-year-oldwinemaking history.”

Also, Jilavyan said, they seek to make Armenia an attractive destination for wine therapy.

“Enotherapy is common in all developed countries that have grape and wine production. The introduction of this form of travel will also solve the problem of wine which hasn’t been used up and is no longer subject to consumption,” he added.

“Enotherapy concerns both tourism and health care. We’ll examine the issue with the Ministry of Health and introduce a project on wine therapy in 2017.”

Yerevan appears in Top 5 popular destinations for Russian tourists during summer weekends

June 27, 2016 by administrator

Russian RoomGuru.ru hotel search engine has determined the most popular destinations of Russian tourists during their summer vacation.

The rating is based on the search data and hotel bookings for Sundays by tourists travelling alone from the period of 1 June to 31 August.

The top 10 popular destinations fro Russian tourists include Prague, Minsk, Baku, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Barcelona and Warsaw.

According to the data of RoomGuru.ru, tourists travel to Yerevan for a weekend and for three days on average, paying about $48 per day for accommodations in a hotel.

According to the expenses, the most economical city for summer vacations is Minsk ($38 per day on average), the most expensive one being London (over $150 per day).

Russian tourists visit Prague for 5 days on average and spend $60 per day for accommodation, while in Tbilisi the cost makes up $43,000 rubles per day.

Russian tourists make the longest tours to Barcelona (6 days), while the shortest tour is that to Vilnius (1.5 day).

Number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey’s top resort down 81%

February 8, 2016 by administrator

205587 The number of Russian tourists visiting Turkey’s top holiday resort town of Antalya decreased by 81 percent, as their numbers plummeted to 2,427 in January from 12,870 of January 2015 while the total number of tourists visiting the city in January decreased 17 percent, according to official figures, Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Numbers also showed that only a total of 97,601 tourists visited Antalya in January, the lowest for January in the last decade.

Antalya hosted some 135,010 tourists in January 2006 and 125,446 in January 2007. It saw its highest turnout in January 2008 with 140,306. In January 2009 and January 2010, Antalya received 106,539 and 140,019 visitors, respectively. After 2010, the number of tourists visiting the city reached a stable level, with 126,272 tourists in January 2011, 122,314 in January 2012, 111,485 in January 2013 and 116,974 in January 2014. Last January, Antalya’s total visitors stood at 117,746.

Antalya gathers millions of local and international tourists each year, with its luxury hotels usually overbooked especially in the summer seasons. Meanwhile in winter, tourism slows down due to dropping temperatures.

The Russian market experienced the largest decrease in the number of tourists visiting the city in January 2016, as Russia ranked 5th in 2016, compared to 2nd in 2015 in terms of countries with the highest number of visitors to Antalya.

Turkey was Russia’s number one foreign tourism destination for years but this came to an abrupt end following the shooting down of a Russian military plane by Turkish jets on the Syria-Turkey border on Nov 24, 2015. Upon the incident, Russia imposed economic sanctions against Turkey and travel restrictions on Russian tourists visiting Turkey.

Turkey’s tourism industry also expects to see losses in other markets this year after an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suicide bomb attack in Istanbul’s top tourist spot Sultanahmet, which killed 11 German tourists on Jan 12, highlighted security concerns for tourists planning to visit Turkey.

The loss in the German market stood at 16 percent as the number of Germans visiting Antalya decreased to 44,262 in January 2016 from 52,731 in January 2015. While Germans took the top spot for tourists in Antalya, the Dutch followed second. However the Dutch market has also decreased by 20 percent compared to 2015, as this year’s January number fell to 4,544 from 5,688.

The number of Israeli visitors saw a 122 percent increase, bringing it to third. In January 2016, the number of Israeli tourists visiting the city reached to 4,475, a huge leap from 2,008 visitors in January 2015.

Britain came fourth with a 14 percent decrease as Antalya only hosted some 2,965 English tourists in January. British tourists mostly like Antalya for its luxury golf club resorts in the Belek region of the province.

According to the statistics of Antalya’s provincial directorate of culture and tourism, among the 38 countries that send tourists to Antalya, only nine surpassed their January 2015 numbers. However, the surplus in the number of tourists arriving from these nine (which included Israel, Ukraine, France, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Estonia, Serbia and Syria) covered only 30 percent of the loss caused by the decrease in the Russian market.

Photo: Antalyahomes.com

80,000 Russian tourists still in Egypt to travel home separately from their luggage

November 7, 2015 by administrator

Russian tourists leaving Egypt will only be able to take cabin baggage with them, and their other luggage will be delivered later on cargo planes, Russia’s tourism chief said. There are an estimated 80,000 Russians staying in Hurgada and Sharm el-Sheikh.

Authorities stressed they are not planning any emergency evacuation, the head of Russia’s federal tourism agency Oleg Safonov told journalists Saturday. “A process of planned transfer of tourists from Hurghada, Cairo and Sharm el-Sheikh will take place,” he said.

Safonov said that new tourists from Russia will not be able to visit the country. Russia will send empty planes to bring home travelers scheduled to come back at the end of their vacations.

Turkey loses over 500,000 Russian tourists in seven months

August 18, 2015 by administrator

More than 500,000 fewer Russians visited Turkey in the first seven months of 2015 in comparison to the same period the year previously, tourism representatives have said, noting the greatest drop-off was seen in the southern hotspot of Antalya.

In Antalya, the trajectory of the tourism industry has been raising concerns, due to the ruble’s devaluation. At the same time, increased militancy and security alerts across Turkey, along with the tarnished image of the country in Europe, have caused a significant fall in tourist numbers.

In the first seven months of the year, the number of Russian tourists to Turkey dropped from around 2 million to 1.4 million year-on-year. However, the number of German visitors rose between January and July by 1.9 percent to 2.1 million, according to the Touristic Hoteliers Association of the Mediterranean (AKTOB).

According to data released by the Antalya Provincial Directorate of the Culture and Tourism Ministry, around 7.2 million total visitors have landed at Antalya and Gazipaşa airports to Aug. 15, a 6 percent fall over the same period in 2014.

The report shows that the leading tourism markets of western, northern and central European countries have faced stagnation and regression in the period.