Demand for New Year tickets from Kazan rises by 20%
Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Sochi are in the top 3 most popular Russian cities, and Prague, Baku and Dubai are among foreign destinations
Many citizens of Kazan have already decided where they will spend the upcoming holidays. Early booking showed that demand for New Year tickets with a flight from Kazan has gone up by 20% over the year, while the average ticket price has risen by 4%, to 11,159 rubles, analysts of ticket booking engines. Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Sochi remain the most popular destinations to celebrate the holiday in Russia among residents of the Tatarstan capital. Realnoe Vremya found out how tour operators’ hopes lived up to the expectations of New Year holidays, how demand for tickets fuel the rise in prices and what additional flights would appear by the holidays at the airport and railway stations.
Additional railway runs and flights
Russian Railways added about 1,400 additional train runs for the most popular destinations in the country on New Year and Christmas holidays. To meet the higher demand for passenger carriages during the holidays, seven additional trains will connect Kazan and Moscow. Additional trains will depart from the Tatarstan capital to Saint Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. In general this year passenger traffic has been 2% higher, over 38 million passengers departed from railway stations of Gorky Railway from January to November.
Additional flights will traditionally appear at Kazan International Airport by the New Year holidays. According to the press service, another airline will operate the flight from Kazan to Istanbul from 27 December: Smartavia will operate charter flights to Turkey on Boeing 737-800 with a capacity of 189 passengers. The flights will be on Fridays until 10 January 2020 according to the timetable:
- Departure from Kazan at 15.00, arrival at Istanbul at 18.40;
- Departure from Istanbul at 09.15, arrival at Kazan at 12.55 (time in Turkey coincides with Moscow).
The airport also noted significant growth in the number of flights to Istanbul in winter from Kazan.
“Nowadays Turkish Airlines operates five regular flights a week and charter flights by Red Wings. Smartavia too plans to operate two additional flights to Saint Petersburg on 31 December and 8 January — the departure is at 13.15 and 13.20 respectively. IrAero also provides additional flights to the Northern capital on 28 and 30 December as well as on 6 January. The departures are at 21.40, 21.50 and 04.30 respectively,” press secretary of Kazan International Airport Adel Gataullin told Realnoe Vremya.
Also, he says that Nordwind Airlines offers an additional flight programme to Sochi, Simferopol and Moscow from 28 December to 8 January.
Demand for New Year tickets from Kazan rises by 20%
The popularity of flights on New Year holidays traditionally grows. According to early booking, this time the rise in demand for New Year tickets from Kazan exceeded all expectations:
“In general, according to early booking, demand for New Year tickets from Kazan has risen by 20%, while the average flight ticket has — by 4%, to 11,000 rubles,” Yulia Domrachyova, employee of the press service of Aviasales, told Realnoe Vremya.
According to Aviasales, these are popular New Year destinations from Kazan:
- Moscow (average price 4,727 rubles) — the capital accounts for 27% of all early New Year bookings;
- Petersburg (7,918 rubles) — 20%;
- Sochi (11,845 rubles) — 8%;
- Prague (20,360 rubles) — 3%;
- Baku (11,630 rubles) — 2%;
- Dubai (27,847 rubles) — 2%.
Flight tickets start to notably go up in price 3-4 days to New Year. For instance, today it is the low-cost airline’s cheapest ticket to Moscow from Kazan on 27 December will cost 2,700 rubles, the most expensive is 12,000 rubles. The cheapest ticket to Saint Petersburg on the same day is 3,955 rubles, the most expensive is 6,431 rubles (according to Yandex.Flights).
Nostalgia wins
Citizens didn’t change their traditional choice — to celebrate New Tear in a foreign resort. According to Director General of Companion SP Sergey Pasechnik, the most popular tours, of course, became more expensive:
At the same time, flights to former Soviet resorts gain in popularity among residents of Tatarstan on holidays: “Now there is a wave of nostalgia, direct flights to the capitals of former allied republics have appeared, there are tourist groups to Baku, Tbilisi,” Pasechnik stressed. Russian health resorts have begun to attract Kazan citizens too: “We’ve been in close contact with Altai, offers in Altai have been in demand”.
“Despite the crisis, this year everybody has decided to travel to warm countries to celebrate New Year with dinner. Sales to Israel, Thailand, India, the Emirates have gone up,” Director Travel&Work Yulia Talanova told our newspaper. Kazan itself remains in the top 5 most popular New Year destinations — the demand for tours to the Tatarstan capital is quite stable, Sergey Pasechnik says. Yulia Talanova said that guests choose tours with excursions to Kazan and other Tatarstan cities with pleasure. Yulia Domrachyova also noted that people had begun flying to the Tatarstan capital 1,5 times more.