Russia sees almost 30% decline in inbound tourism in 2022 - Border Service

MOSCOW. Feb 8 (Interfax) - Over 200,000 foreign tourists visited Russia in 2022, down 28.8% from the year before, the Federal Security Service (FSB)'s Border Service said in its statistical report.

A total of 205,100 foreigners visited Russia as tourists last year, it said.

Most of the tourists came from Germany (25,300, or 33.4% fewer than the year before), followed by Turkey with 22,600 tourists (down 2.5%) and Iran with 14,600 tourists, up 25 times from 2021.

Also in the top five are Kazakhstan (13,270 tourists) and Cuba (11,300). They are followed by Uzbekistan (8,860), Kyrgyzstan (6,600), India (6,400), the United States (5,580) and Armenia (5,200).

Israel, Latvia, the United Arab Emirates, Serbia, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkmenistan, Italy, France and Lithuania are in the top 20.

Inbound tourism in Russia drastically fell amid the coronavirus pandemic. The border closure in 2020 cut tourist arrivals 93%, compared to 2019 when Russia was visited by over 5 million foreign tourists. There were 288,000 foreign tourist arrivals in Russia in 2021, or 14% less than in 2020.