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Airlines Move To Accommodate Surge In Russian Visitors To The UAE

This article is more than 6 years old.

A sharp rise in the number of Russians visiting the United Arab Emirates is being met with a flood of extra capacity on airline routes between the two countries.

Dubai-based airline Emirates has added 1,000 seats a week to its Moscow service from Oct. 1 while FlyDubai said in September that it would double its capacity on routes to Russia over the winter “in response to growing passenger demand.” The no-frills carrier will operate 40 weekly flights to 10 points in Russia, including such out-of-the-way places as the city of Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea coast and Ufa, capital of the Bashkortostan republic in the center of Russia.

The reason for all this extra capacity can be traced back to the decision in January to allow Russian visitors to get a visa on arrival in the UAE. Whereas they previously had to apply in advance for a visa, Russians arriving at any entry point into the country can now get a 30-day visa, which can be extended for a further 30 days.

That followed a sharp fall in tourist numbers from Russia in 2015, when just 472,000 visited the UAE, down 36% from the 737,000 who showed up in 2014, according to Russia’s official statistics agency Rosstat.

That was a symptom of a 20% cut in the overall number of outbound trips by Russians in 2015, a figure which dropped by a further 8% last year, as the country continued to suffer economically and incomes fell. However, the UAE was one of the countries which managed to buck the trend and attract more Russian holiday-makers last year, with the number arriving increasing 6% in 2016 to 499,000.

The signs are that this year has seen a sharp acceleration in that pattern. According to Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, 97% more Russians came to the emirate in the first half of 2017, compared to the same period of 2016.

Dubai might be the main beneficiary of the change to the visa rules, but it is far from the only emirate seeing a surge in Slavic visitors. Last month also saw the inaugural flight by Rossiya into Sharjah international airport, which serves the emirate to the northeast of Dubai. The Russian carrier will fly twice-weekly from St Petersburg and Ekaterinburg to Sharjah between now and March next year. Air Arabia, a low-cost carrier whose main hub is at Sharjah, already flies to Moscow Domodedovo airport.

These extra flights should help to cement the 12% increase in visitor numbers from Russia to Sharjah last year. In April, the Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority said it saw “opportunities for further growth” in the Russian market “as the country starts to show considerable rebound from its earlier economic situation.”

Some other, lesser-known emirates are also benefiting from the growth in Russian visitors. Haitham Mattar, chief executive officer of the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (Raktda), says Russians have overtaken British tourists in number and are now the second largest group of visitors to that corner of the UAE, behind Germany.

“In the first half of this year, our guest arrival rose 84% year-on-year and Russian visitors contributed significantly to that,” he says. “The increase in Russian visitors is partly down to the new ease of visa-on-arrival and also to our increased number of roadshows and events in Russia which helped build our profile in the market and brought us into contact with leading Russian tour operators.”

Raktda also has a Russian-language website to try and lure in more vacationers, but the growth in numbers is not simply a case of easier visas and more marketing.

An important related factor is the continued reluctance among Russian holiday-makers to go to once-popular destinations, such as Egypt and Turkey. That stems from political instability in those countries and, in Egypt’s case, the bombing of MetroJet flight 9268 in October 2015 shortly after it had taken off from Sharm El Sheikh en route home to St Petersburg. The atrocity, which killed all 224 people on board, was claimed by Islamic State terrorists.

The UAE is not the only destination that has been able to tap into Russian demand for new places to enjoy some sunshine. The likes of Tunisia and Cyprus have also seen sharp increases over the past couple of years and there has also been a recovery in visitor number to Thailand, Vietnam, Spain and Italy over the past year. Given the increase in airline connections, many Russians heading  to those destinations might well find themselves passing through Dubai’s airports, even if they don’t want to spend any time in the UAE itself.

 

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