A total of 232,000 tourist visits were made to the Russian Federation from Estonia in the first half of 2019, according to Russian tourism agency TurStat, a 9 percent rise year-on-year (y-o-y), ERR reports.
The figure makes Estonia the ninth most significant country for tourism to Russia, BNS reports.
The report did not specify the nature of tourism engaged in, though the statistics reportedly concern numbers of visits, rather than individuals. Estonia has a population of around 1.3 million, over 300,000 of whom are Russian-speakers.
Nearly all the top 10 countries supplying tourists to Russia were countries which border it, with Ukraine in the number one spot (3.4 million visits) and Finland in fourth (430,000 visits). One exception to that is Germany, with 270,000 tourist visits.
Earlier this year, Estonia’s tourism authority said the number of Russian tourists visiting the neighboring Baltic country has increased by 41% in May year-on-year.
Finnish tourists were the most numerous visitors in Estonia during the month, with about a third coming from that country. Russian tourists made up 12 percent of tourists in Estonia, while 8% of them were Latvian, Statistics Estonia said. Nonetheless the number of tourists from Finland declined on the previous year, by 15 percent, the agency said.
