“The decrease comes because Russia is not exactly a popular country at the moment due to the situation in Ukraine and the rather one-sided view presented by western media,” says Ulrich Kreuzenbeck, head of the Flait Group Murmansk to BarentsObserver.
Kreuzenbeck’s company has not seen any decrease in visitors from abroad, “simply because we mainly work with business-travel,” he explains.
“But my optical impression is that there are fewer tourists in Murmansk.”
Ulrich Kreuzenbeck says the way western media presents Russia nowadays makes more people identify Russia with something negative. “You do not go on holiday to a country that is at war. There is much psychology here,” he argues.
The majority of the Norwegians tourists traveling to Murmansk get their visas from Russia’s Consulate General in Kirkenes.
“Within January to August we issued just a little bit more than 3,500 visas, that is almost 1,000 less than the same period in 2013,” says Consul General Mikhail Noskov to BarentsObserver. He says there is a slight increase in business visas, and some 700 less tourist visas the first eight months in 2014 compared with same period last year.
Murmansk is likely not the highlight destination among foreign tourists to Russia. The majority of visitors to Russia’s Arctic capital are on business or participating in projects under the Barents cooperation umbrella.
BarentsObserver has spoken to many Norwegians traveling on business in the Russian north and people involved in the formal Barents cooperation structures. Most of them confirm that everything is business as normal.
Although tourist bookings are down, more business- and delegation visits have led to less decrease in hotel prices in Murmansk than in more tourist attractive cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow. Kreuzenbeck with the Flait Group says the main reason why hotel prices are going down is because the newly renovated 17-floor hotel Arktika are opening this week after being closed for eight years.
“Prices on hotel-rooms have started to move after Arktika opened. Especially the Meridian hotel sees a sharp fall,” says Ulrich Kreuzenbeck.
The drop in incoming tourism is not unique for northern Russia. Tour-operators see a nation-wide sharp drop, with as much as 40 to 60 percent from countries in the EU and USA for the first eight months this year, Kommersant reports on Tuesday. From Spain, the drop is 90 percent, from Italy down 60 percent and German tourists to Russia is down 40 percent.
The tour operators in Moscow blame the tense political situation caused by the war in Ukraine.
The Russian Association of Tour Operators expects a further drop and believes hotel prices will decrease. The downturn hits St. Petersburg more than Moscow, since the capital gets more business visitors.
Delovoi Petersburg reported last week that budget accommodation in St. Petersburg had been hardest hit, with occupancy rates in 3-star hotels down 40 percent year-on-year. Some are also having trouble filling beds.
The tourist flow from Russia to Europe has also seen a sharp fall this spring and summer. During the summer, Russia’s tourist sector has witnessed a chain of bankruptcies. From mid-July, 16 companies closed due to financial problems, Itar-Tass reported on Monday.
The Storskog, Borisoglebsk border check-point between Russia and Norway in the north has, however, not seen the drop in travel. Year-on-year, the border has counted a seven percent increase in traffic, a figure that is explained by more day-visitors crossing the border after the two countries opened for visa-free travel regime for all citizens living less than 30 kilometres from the borderline.
At Norway’s Consulate General in Murmansk, the number of issued visas is down by more than 3,000 for the January to August period compared with last year.
“We issued 17,198 in the first eight months 2013 compared with 14,200 this year,” says Per Christian Jørgensen, head of the visa-section at the Consulate General.
He says the decrease might very well be because many of those in Murmansk that are traveling frequently to Norway already holds a multiple entry visa and therefore don’t need to apply. Norway, unlike Finland, issues multiple entry visas valid for periods of up to three or even five years.
At Finland’s Consulate branch office in Murmansk, the number of visas issued is down some 25 percent in the eight first months of 2014 year-on-year.
Consul Pirkko Mäkikokkila says to BarentsObserver that 31,709 visas was issued in Murmansk in the period, down from 42,186 the same period 2013. A similar trend is seen at Finland’s Consulate office in Petrozavodsk in Karelia.
