Closed Europe, gone sanctions and difficulties with card payments have led many Russian tourists to choose holidays in Belarus. Moreover, according to the observations of tour operators, the country is slightly changing its profile: for example, young people rushed to Belarus for shopping tours after the European brands that left Russia, the popularity of city weekend tours is growing, but such an unchanged “main profile” of the country as sanatorium treatment demonstrates new “import substitution trends”.
At the same time, the country remains accessible, both in terms of the availability of transport links and its price. Belavia flies to all airports in Moscow every day, and also connects Minsk with more than 10 regions of Russia. Prices – from 7 to 12 thousand rubles in both directions, almost like “internal” tickets. In addition, the country allowed railway and car tourists. As a result, according to ATOR experts, Belarus increased its growth by an average of 10-15% compared to last year, while for more “profile” tour operators, the increase reaches 60%.
In particular, due to new trends caused by “objective circumstances”. One of them is shopping tours. Belarus, unlike Russia, did not leave many major European brands, while paying for their products with the Mir card is almost without problems, and the calculation is carried out at the favorable rate of the National Bank of Belarus.
As noted by the experts of the tour operator Multitour ”, the share of shop tourists already accounts for about 10-15% of all bookings. In general, they turn out to be a typical audience for weekend tours – and the share of this segment among tour operators FUN & SUN and PAC Group has grown to 45-50%. FUN & SUN generally announced plans to launch a special shopping tour to Belarus, possibly combined with tours for Visa or Mastercard of a local bank.
Traditional sanatorium and resort holidays are also on the rise – places in health resorts are occupied “almost like in Sochi” until September. At the same time, interestingly, European tour operators offer their own “import substitution” programs. The PAC Group, for example, stated that those tourists who had previously flown for radon procedures in the Czech Jachymov can be recommended a similar treatment in the specialized Alfa Radon 5 * sanatorium in the Grodno region.
At the same time, the audience of all directions of Belarus is “getting younger”. According to the experts of the tour operator “Dolphin”, now solvent tourists aged 25 to 45 are traveling more and more. They develop new trends “Thanks to this audience, the demand for sightseeing tours and weekend tours is growing. The duration of trips to Belarus is also increasing. If earlier these were tours for 3-4 days, today we see an increase in the number of trips for excursion programs from 5 to 7 days,” she sums up.
As for the prices for tours, it is difficult to derive the arithmetic average due to the variety of programs. But market players presented the following prices
- Intourist: excursion program “Thousand Year Brest” (7 days/6 nights) – from 87,103 rubles. for two (all tickets to museums are included, meals are based on breakfast + lunch, travel to Minsk and back is paid additionally). A shortened version of this program (3 nights/4 days) will cost from 48,065 rubles. for two.
- “Vedi Group”: sightseeing tours to Minsk (3 days/2 nights) – from 46,600 rubles. for two, city tours (3 days/2 nights) – from 24,400 rubles. for two.
- “Multitour”: tour “Belarusian Kaleidoscope” (3 days/2 nights) – about 40 thousand rubles. for two.
- PAC Group: tour to Brest for 5 nights with airfare – from 32,160 rubles. for two.
- FUN&SUN: tour “Weekend in Minsk” (3 days/2 nights, check-in on August 19) – from 24,797 rubles. for two. Tour “Slavic Weekend” with air flight (departure on September 15, 3 days/2 nights, including SPA-procedures in the sanatorium “Alfa-Radon” 5 *) – from 45,885 rubles. for two.
- ANEX Tour: city tour to Minsk (3 days/2 nights) – from 24 thousand rubles. for two without a flight.
- “Russian Express”: the “Weekend in Minsk” tour with an air flight will cost 45 thousand rubles. for two.
We will add that the TURPROM editors recommend choosing a tour to Belarus from any major Russian tour operator at guaranteed best prices in one of the well-known online package tour aggregators: ✈ here is a direct link to Level .Travel and here is ✈ a direct link to Travelata. These online agencies aggregate absolutely all tours of all Russian tour operators, which allows tourists to conveniently compare them and choose the best tour packages. The selected tour can be booked immediately, receive instant confirmation and pay online through a secure banking gateway and receive documents. Or you can just look at and compare the current prices for tours from all tour operators at once.
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