TURIZM.RU conducted a study to determine whether Russians would miss the online platform Booking.com if it were shut down in our country.
It turned out that the majority of respondents - 72% believe that this foreign hotel booking service has no alternatives, so it is impossible to do without it.
The remaining votes were distributed as follows: 13% respondents believed the internet was full of other similar sites; 10% admitted that Booking.com's closure wouldn't affect them at all, as they book directly with hotels; and 5% of our compatriots stated that Booking.com's closure wouldn't affect them at all, as they had no idea what it was.
As a reminder, in May, the Russian Ministry of Culture instructed Rostourism (the Federal Agency for Tourism) to assess the feasibility of restricting Booking.com's operations in Russia. The head of a domestic tour operator approached the authorities with this proposal. The justification for banning Booking.com could be that the foreign company is not legally registered in our country and does not pay taxes. The Ministry of Culture later opposed the ban, while Rostourism proposed creating a Russian equivalent of the popular platform.
Source: news.turizm.ru