Tour operator websites and alternative hotel booking services have definitely benefited from the departure of international aggregators from the US and EU from the Russian market, such as Booking.com, Trivago, Airbnb, Agoda, Skyscanner. Forbes writes about this, citing a study by MTS Travel. The study on where Russian tourists book hotels after the departure of Bookingcom was based on Big Data: anonymized aggregated traffic data was analyzed on 75 popular platforms for booking accommodation, tickets, buying tours and excursions, as well as reviews from January 2021 to December 2022 year inclusive.
As a result, according to what Forbes cites, the Sutochno.ru aggregator specializing in apartment rentals won: the number of requests from unique users there increased by 4.5 times compared to 2021. The Bronevik.com service became the second — in 2022, its audience increased by 4.3 times. Ostrovok.ru, an alternative to Booking, received bronze – there this number increased by 3.5 times.
These are the sites of tour operators – for example, the fourth place belongs to the Dolphin tour operator – an increase of 3.3 times. And on the fifth site of the tour operator Tez Tour – 2 times more unique visitors.
The greatest decline is among the departed “foreigners”, moreover, among those who were not very popular in the Russian market anyway. trivago is down 67%, Agoda is down 63%. Skyscanner follows by a large margin – minus 38% and Booking, which reduced volumes by a third – but has not left the top five most popular services among Russian tourists. By the way, this top five also includes the Tutu.ru service, the site with user reviews Tripadviser, the Yandex Travel aggregator and the Aviasales ticket search engine. The audience of their sites and applications has grown by an average of 11% by 2021.
At the same time, the experts of these services unanimously declare: in 2023, competition between Russian services will continue to grow. At the same time, they plan to support the audience with marketing efforts rather than bonuses for tourists. Online and offline advertising, TV commercials and billboards – it is planned to “bring information” to the tourist from all platforms. At the same time, in general, while the market is sure that there will be enough customers.
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