Two years after the cooling of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States, experts from the business tourism agency Aeroclub analyzed how business activity between the countries has changed: has demand for this destination recovered among business travelers? from Russia and in which sectors of the economy.
As the company told the TRN portal, the significant drop in demand for visas and air tickets to the United States, which was recorded in the first year after the aggravation of diplomatic relations, has stopped. The number of business travelers purchasing tickets for flights to the United States, as well as those applying for visas, remained at the level of the same period last year. Demand, which fell by 15% in a year from August 2017 to August 2018, has not recovered.
Over the past year, IT companies' representatives have been the most frequent business travelers to the US: the share of air tickets purchased by representatives of this sector reached 24%. Business travelers from the extractive and manufacturing sectors of the economy and the energy sector are still feeling the effects of the crisis in relations between Russia and the US: demand, which fell by 18% last year, has remained. The only sector of the economy that has shown a revival compared to last year is FMCG. Representatives of these companies have become 18% more likely to fly to the US.
The most popular cities among Russian businessmen were New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. At the same time, the first two destinations saw a 10% drop in demand, while demand in San Francisco increased by more than a third. Also, demand for flights to Miami almost doubled, and interest in Seattle increased. For travel to these cities, business tourists most often choose Aeroflot flights: demand for airline tickets from the national carrier fell by 15% compared to the period before the diplomatic conflict. Lufthansa is in second place in popularity, and Air France is in third place, having lost 42% passengers traveling on business trips to the United States in two years.
Experts noted that over the past two years, the situation with the terms of processing visas to the USA has changed slightly: as before, the period for consideration of a visa application takes 3-4 business days, but an appointment for an interview in Moscow can be 2-3 months in advance. In this regard, many business tourists chose other cities to apply for a visa - Yekaterinburg or Vladivostok. In these cities, the period for processing a visa from the moment of registration for filing an application can be about two weeks.
"The majority of business travelers prefer to submit documents abroad. In the first year after the diplomatic conflict broke out, visa-free countries were popular, such as the near abroad - Kazakhstan and Ukraine. But over time, business travelers began to submit documents more often through the EU countries," noted Yulia Lipatova, CEO of the Aeroclub business tourism agency. "Previously, the most popular countries for this procedure were France or Germany, but now, due to the increased number of refusals, the most popular countries for business travelers to submit applications for a US visa have become Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria."
The study found that 15% visas were issued for one year during the period under review. This is because at the beginning of 2019, namely from January 1 to March 3, 2019, the US Embassy temporarily changed its visa issuance policy: instead of three-year multiple-entry visas, single-entry annual visas were issued by default. Then the Embassy returned to the previous procedure.
Experts noted that the largest number of business travelers to the US are from Moscow: they account for 80% of all purchased air tickets. At the same time, the number of business tourists from the capital began to fall with the onset of the cooling of diplomatic relations and has decreased by 8% over the past year. The number of businessmen from St. Petersburg, on the contrary, has grown by 54% over the past year, exceeding the pre-crisis year figures by 10%. The share of business travelers from the Northern Capital reached 17% this year. In third place are business representatives from Nizhny Novgorod: the share of air tickets purchased from this city amounted to 9%, and demand has increased several times.
Source: trn-news.ru
