Russian tourist flow to Uzbekistan up tenfold over past 4 years

MOSCOW. May 3 (Interfax) - The number of Russian tourists visiting Uzbekistan has increased tenfold over the past four years from 37,000 to more than 400,000, accounting for a third of the overall tourist flow to the country, Russian Deputy Economic Development Minister Dmitry Volvach said.

"There is visa-free travel between Russia and Uzbekistan, and direct flights operate not only between the two capitals but also between major regional cities. More than 250 flights to Uzbekistan are performed every week, or around 12,000 flights a year. And this is not the limit of what we can do. We are now considering increasing the number of flights and diversifying their geography, as Russian tourists' interest in Uzbekistan is constantly growing," Volvach said at the panel session Tourism and Cultural Heritage: Attractiveness of the Central Asian Region for Foreign Investors, as part of the Tashkent International Investment Forum.

He also presented the statistics of bilateral tourism between Russia and Uzbekistan.

"The number of Russian tourists' trips to Uzbekistan has grown tenfold over the past four years from 37,000 to 403,000 people. Russian tourists accounted for about 33% of the overall tourist flow to Uzbekistan in 2023. Uzbek tourists' interest in Russia has also been growing steadily. More than 800,000 such trips were made to Russia in 2023, which is twice as many as the year before. On the whole, bilateral tourism has reached the pre-pandemic levels," Volvach said.

The Commonwealth of Independent States' tourism cooperation strategy until 2030 envisages intensifying tourism flows on the CIS internal market and pooling efforts to create a joint tourism product and promote it on the world market, he said.