UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 29, 2019. There were 612 travel agents in Sverdlovsk Region last year, including 35 companies also acting as tour operators (5.7%) and 6 companies acting solely as tour operators (1%), Sverdlovskstat reports.

170,700 package tours got sold to Sverdlovsk Region-based customers in 2018 (total value: RUB 13.8bn), which was 11.1% less than one year previously. The mean price of a package tour came to RUB 80,700 (up 11% against the year 2017).

Russian nationals purchased 117,100 international tours from the local agents last year (compared with 139,200 tours in 2017); this was 2.2 times more than the number of domestic travel tours purchased in 2018. Compared with one year earlier, the overall value of international tours rose by 1.4% and amounted to RUB 11.6bn; the overall value of domestic tours dropped by 14.2% and amounted to RUB 2.1bn.

362,200 Sverdlovsk Region residents used the travel agents’ services last year, which was 10.5% less than in 2017; this included 102,000 people who traveled around Russia (-0.7% on a year earlier).

The most popular international destinations were Turkey, China, and Thailand.