UrBC, Moscow, September 7, 2015. The number of Russian international travelers went down by 24% in the first half of 2015, with 16.43m Russians traveling abroad in the six months of the year, Rostourism refers to Rosstat as stating. The number of travelers who went abroad as tourists rather than on business decreased by 33.8%, down to 5.49m people.

Finland proved the most popular destination in absolute numbers, with 1.7m people (-30% on a year earlier) going there in the first half of the year. However, only 118,992 of them were tourists, which was 35.9% less than a year earlier.

As for beach holidays, Egypt was No.1 place to go: 1,318,958 Russian citizens went there, including 1.054m tourists (-13.4%). This was the first time in five years that Egypt got ahead of Turkey on the most-visited destinations list. The latter was visited by 1.031m Russian tourists (-25.7%).

Tunisia is where the number of Russian tourists declined the most, by 75.4%. 22.500 people went there as tourists in the first half of 2015, compared with 91,300 people a year earlier.