Simferopol and Sochi take the first two places in bookings of airplane tickets for summer. Barcelona is in third place. The statistics are provided by the Aviasales Company, which stresses that “Russians don't prefer to plan vacations beforehand. More than half of all tickets are sold a week before a flight. However, the course towards import substitution in tourism is obvious even today.” The head of the region’s parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, thinks that the number of tourists who will visit Crimea this year could reach 4.5 to 5 million people. Last year more than 4 million people spent their vacations in Crimea. The Minister of Resorts and Tourism of Crimea, Elena Yurchenko, says that last year's tendency will continue this year: 50-52% of tourists come to Crimea by plane, about 45% by ferry; and 3 to 5% by train.
The Head of the Republic of Crimea, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, says that there are two ways to get to the republic - the airport of Simferopol and the Kerch ferry. “Unfortunately, rail communication with Ukraine is interrupted, not through the fault of the Republic of Crimea. Again, Ukraine is trying to complicate the lives of people in the country. Anyway, the airport of Simferopol this year will take the summer to 200 flights a day, which never happened before. The airport is building new terminals without budget money, but relying on the money that the airport earned within the season. And the takeoff and landing strips are being repaired. Every day, every night, a company that caters to Sheremetyevo Airport repairs the takeoff and landing strips,” Aksenov said.
According to him, the Kerch ferry is under the patronage of the Ministry of Transport of the Republic of Crimea: “Now an inventory is being held there, and reception is being made of all the material valuables that are in its possession. In this case, the contract and charters are to be inspected. Soon we will be literally reporting the fully operational strategy of the Kerch ferry for this season to the Council of Ministers.”
“Program support from the Government of the Russian Federation is discussed in order to make payments to a number of airlines in terms of the cost of tickets. This process is now related to the adjustment of the budget. This issue is not resolved yet, but we will soon inform citizens in writing how much money will be allocated to resolve this problem,” Aksenov promises.
Tourists are mainly coming to the south coast of Crimea. However, according to Elena Yurchenko, there are prospects for development of the west coast: “Considering the results of 2014, beach tourism is the most popular. However, its share will fall, as health-related and cultural and educational tourism is becoming more popular. And the share of children’s recreation is still significant.”
