UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 19, 2020. Head of the Russian Tourism Association’s Ural division and Director of Ural Tourism Association Mikhail Maltsev told UrBC about the travel market in times of COVID-19 outbreak.

‘We are talking about a global quarantine here. I believe the remaining non-quarantined countries such as Turkey will be the next to follow suit and close their borders. This will be followed by Russian constituencies, then cities, and then quarters closing their ‘borders’ as well. I am not an epidemiology expert, but this scenario doesn’t seem unlikely. Some of the people in the travel industry are naive enough to believe that Turkey closing its borders will result in growing demand for vacations in Krasnodar Territory and the Crimean Peninsula; what they fail to understand is that we are one step one away from new quarantine-related restrictions, including local ones. We are obviously just approaching the peak of the epidemic curve at the moment, and it’s unclear what happens next,’ Maltsev said.

According to Maltsev, the tourism community is keeping an eye on the way the events unfold.

‘We are all watching a TV show where the ending is yet unknown. Strategic planning makes no sense just yet. Things will be in the air for another one and half to two months at least. Only then will we able to think of any strategic planning, provided, of course, things go well,’ Maltsev says.

Now 114 people in Russia’s 26 constituencies have been diagnosed with COVID-19 so far.