Astana, Almaty among TOP-10 popular CIS cities

ASTANA. KAZINFORM Russian internet portal Travel.ru unveiled what cities of the CIS countries are the most popular among Russian tourists travelling on their own. The results of the survey were based on the hotel booking data in 2015.

The top 10 popular CIS cities include: Minsk, Kiev, Almaty, Baku, Erevan, Astana, Vitebsk, Bishkek, Tashkent and Chisinau. Among top 20 popular CIS cities are Brest, Grodno and Gomel in Belarus; Lviv, Odessa and Kharkov in Ukraine; Aktau and Aktobe in Kazakhstan as well as Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Belarus tops the list of 5 most popular CIS countries for travelling (37% of all trips). Then comes Ukraine (22%). Kazakhstan ranks the third in this list (16%). Azerbaijan and Armenia turned out to be less attractive for the Russian tourists (9% and 7% respectively). As for accommodation, Minsk hotels' cost makes in average 73 U.S. dollars per day. In Kiev tourists pay 87 U.S. dollars for a hotel room, in Almaty the average price makes 84 U.S. dollars, in Baku - 78 U.S. dollars and in Erevan this figure is 63 U.S. dollars per day. Astana was named the most expensive capital city of the CIS (115 U.S. dollars per day) while Bishkek enjoys the popularity of being the cheapest one (30 U.S. dollars per day).