Yandex analysts have studied how the popularity of tourist destinations among Russians has changed in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. To do this, we compared the data of search queries for the past and the year before, and also studied Yandex.Travel data on the popularity of hotels in different cities and resorts.
In general, interest in tourism has significantly decreased last year: the share of travel requests in the total flow of requests to Yandex search fell by 38%. The ratio of tourist inquiries about Russia and foreign countries has changed dramatically: if last year there were approximately equal numbers of them, then the share of domestic destinations rose to 70%.
About Turkey, the main foreign destination in 2019, was asked four times less in 2020. Nevertheless, Turkey retained its first place in the ranking of tourist countries.
Against the background of a general decline in interest in overseas tourism, one striking exception stands out – the increased popularity of Tanzania. It was one of the first countries to be allowed to fly when the restrictions were lifted. As a result, last year interest in Tanzania was three times higher than the year before.
To study how the popularity of domestic tourism destinations has changed, Yandex analysts studied the interest in booking hotels in different cities: they calculated the transitions from the service to the sites of aggregator partners.
Sochi took the first place in the rating of Russian destinations: about 40% more people were interested in the resort than last year. Interest in Evpatoria, Sevastopol and Kaliningrad has grown even more, more than half as much. Moscow rolled back from first position to third. Other large non-resort cities – Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod – have also noticeably lost their popularity.
