Statistics and trends of the online travel market in Russia
The eTravel market is experiencing a surge in opportunities with the emergence of various ticket and tour aggregators. Additionally, tourists can now use applications that select cost-effective offers and optimize travel expenses in order to save on trips and plan them more efficiently. Furthermore, products that allow travelers to organize their own tours and create personalized travel itineraries are gaining popularity.
Online Tour Searching
In 2018, there was a noticeable increase in the volume of online searches made by Russian tourists. Specifically, the number of searches for “air travel” on Yandex reached its peak in July 2018, showing a nearly 25% increase compared to July of the previous year. Similar positive trends in online searches for tickets, tours, and vacation packages were also observed in other queries, such as “package tours”, “buy a tour”, “buy air tickets”, and “buy an air ticket online”.
The search volume is also experiencing growth, just like the eTravel market, at a rate of 15-25% annually, with the exception of tours, which have seen a growth rate of over 60%.
Comparison of Desktop and Mobile Devices
In 2018, Russian tourists searched for air tickets with equal frequency on both desktop computers and mobile devices.
However, while the number of PC queries for terms like “air tickets” remained relatively stable over the course of two years, there was a positive trend of over 30% in mobile device searches.
Size of the Online Travel Industry Market
The online travel industry in Russia is a relatively small segment of the overall travel market, but it is rapidly expanding. According to the Data Insight Study 2016, online bookings account for 20% of ticket sales, 10-14% of hotel bookings, and only 3-5% of tour sales in Russia (in comparison, the UK has 50% and Germany has 25% online tour sales). The eTravel market in Russia is valued at approximately $13.7 billion as of 2017, with a stable growth rate of just over 20% annually. The online travel industry’s market share in the Russian travel market is around 10%.
According to recent research, the Russian Railways website is the most frequently used online service to purchase travel products, with 43% of buyers using the site at least once in the last year. Airlines websites came in second with 30%, followed by hotel booking services (29%), air ticket sales services (22%), and room reservation on hotel websites (21%).
Aleksey Zaretskiy, the founder of Travelata online service, observed that there is enormous growth potential for the online travel market in Russia. Aviasales reported a 50% increase in airline ticket sales and a 180% increase in hotel room sales in 2016, based on their proprietary data. The package tour sales segment is also experiencing growth, with Travelata.ru reporting a 100% increase in sales volume for 2016 and the founders of another online tour agency, Onlinetours, announcing a growth of 50%.
Market share of Russian online travel companies
Aleksey Zaretskiy, the founder of Travelata online service, has noted that online travel agencies such as OzonTravel, OneTwoTrip, and Anywayanyday are facing a tough situation. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they are being challenged by metasearch engines such as Aviasales, Skyscanner, and Momondo, which have a large audience. People prefer to use these metasearch engines to compare ticket prices from different sellers. On the other hand, Russian airlines have significantly reduced their fees, with Aeroflot even lowering them to zero. This has made it difficult for most online travel agencies to operate. In fact, there have been recent reports that Anywayanyday was sold to Aeroclub Company, which specializes in business tourism.
The market share of online travel agencies in the Russian eTravel market was 37% in 2018.
Tour Aggregator Market
Tour aggregators are an essential player in the eTravel market, as they provide customers access to all current tours online through integration with major tour operators. The Russian market is divided among several online services, including Travelata, Level Travel, and Onlinetours.
As of July 2018, Travelata had over 3 million website visitors and over 1.5 million application installations. The company sends over 100,000 tourists per year, with 80% of them traveling abroad and 20% traveling domestically.
Level Travel has shown significant growth, having expanded more than 3.5 times in 2016 compared to 2017, and twice in H1 2018 compared to H1 2017. The company had 30,000 customers in 2017, with twice as many tourists. The average check for Level Travel’s services amounts to approximately $1200. Despite the market’s overall growth, Level Travel’s growth rate has been faster.
Well-known online services for booking flight tickets
Aviasales.ru is a highly recognized and widely used platform for finding affordable airfares. Users can purchase tickets by being redirected to airline websites or agencies. With Aviasales, customers can access air tickets for travel to 220 countries worldwide. The platform searches and compares prices among 100 agencies and 728 airline companies.
Serpstat.com lists the following as Aviasales’ main competitors in the Russian market:
- Avia.tutu.ru
- Skyscanner.ru
- Avticket.ru
- Avia.travel.ru
- Aviapoisk.ru
Well-known Services for Booking Hotels
Booking.com continues to dominate the hotel booking segment, as it has done in the past. The 2019 ranking of the most popular websites in the world by SimilarWeb is unique in that it combines the traffic from mobile devices and desktop computers for the first time. This new method of scoring takes into account both the number of unique visitors and the number of page views, which provides a measure of the “value and quality of each site.”
2019 Trends
According to the Association of Tour Operators, the trend of digitalization in the tour operation business is expected to gain momentum in 2019. Technology solutions will play an increasingly important role in the sustainability of tour operation companies. Among the most promising solutions are real-time dynamic packaging systems, new B2B booking services, and online services for direct sales of tour packages and individual services to tourists, including the ability to design a tour themselves.
In addition to traditional tour package formation, the tour operation business is expected to expand into new areas that require modern digital tools, such as proprietary hotel management systems, automation tools for host agency operations, and pricing management and demand forecasting solutions based on Big Data.
According to Gleb Kalinin, Head of User Experience at OZON.travel, the Russian online travel market will continue to consolidate, with smaller players that have failed to reach a certain level of scale gradually exiting the market.
On the other hand, Andrei Osintsev, Director of Svyaznoy Travel, highlights the following emerging TravelTech trends:
- The sale of dynamic packaging, which involves offering packages with a minimal range of services, typically including travel and accommodation. However, this product presents technical challenges and suffers from a lack of necessary information.
- The utilization of Big Data and Machine Learning for intelligent search and the creation of tailored offers for clients. Some companies have already started implementing these technologies.
- The use of open search functionality that allows users to explore various dates and destinations based on their budgetary constraints.
According to the expert, the aviation service market has undergone significant changes in recent years. The integration of air ticket sales directly with airline companies under an NDC protocol, cross-selling of additional services before and during flights, the creation of routes using virtual interline capacities, and baggage check-in to the final destination are particularly noteworthy.
We encourage you to download “The Russian Tourism Market Report: Trends, Analysis & Statistics. How to impress Russian tourists and attract them to your country” to gain further insights into the Russian online travel market.