River cruises

2023: Commissioning a record number of ships

About 100 cruise ships entered navigation for the 2023 season in Russia, which is a record figure. This was announced in early June 2023 by the Russian Union of Travel Industry (PCT).

By the summer of 2023, river cruise operators offer dozens of routes on them at various prices - from 5.7 thousand rubles per person for a two-day weekend cruise to almost 900 thousand rubles for an expeditionary route along the Yenisei.

About 100 cruise ships entered the navigation

Alexey Rastegaev, chairman of the cruise commission of the Russian Union of Travel Industry PCT, director of the Volgograd company Cruise, believes that the demand for cruises in 2023 will grow by 10-12% due to the addition of an audience in 2023 thanks to the tourist cashback program.

According to the PCT expert, the general director of the cruise aggregator Infoflot, Andrei Mikhailovsky, weekend cruises are most in demand among tourists. In second place in terms of mass and popularity - cruises MoscowSt. Petersburg-. The third place is occupied by 4-5-day cruises in the cities of the Golden Ring, along the Upper Volga, saturated with excursions. Also in the top five are longer routes along the Lower Volga.

Ilya Sukhovolsky, deputy general director of Vodokhod, said that the company brought 24 motor ships and one high-speed hovercraft Biryusa on Lake Baikal to the rivers in 2023. This is five more ships than in the summer of 2022. According to him, the company plans to transport about 140 thousand tourists in 2023, which will allow it to approach pre-pandemic (we are talking about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic) indicators.

According to the PCT expert, deputy director of the operator Svetlana Goncharova, tourists are increasingly taking not a full cruise, but more affordable "halves" - from Moscow to St. Petersburg or back. Tatarstan is in second place, Solovetsky Islands is in third place, where few flights are placed due to the short season.^[1]

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