Putin Sees Tourism Increase

By The Moscow Times

July 28, 2011

Russia may see a sixfold increase in the number of incoming tourists by 2018, for a total of 23 million visitors from 3.6 million last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a government meeting in Moscow on Thursday.

Tourism accounts for 6.5 percent of gross domestic product, 3 percentage points less than the global average, Putin said. The size of the country's tourist market should increase to 417 billion rubles ($15.1 billion) by 2018 from 88 billion rubles last year, he said.

(Bloomberg)

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