Russia's Domestic Tourism Heads for a Record 97 Million Trips in 2025
Domestic tourism in Russia is set to close 2025 at a new all-time high: the number of trips taken inside the country is heading toward a record figure of about 97 million, the Russian Union of Travel Industry (РСТ) said. Union president Ilya Umansky (Илья Уманский) called the expected result "yet another record" for the domestic market, Interfax reported on December 17, 2025. Behind the headline figure, however, the market is clearly cooling: trips are up 5.84 percent year on year after a 16 percent surge the previous year, while the number of booked room nights has grown 3.69 percent.
A record on top of a slowing trend
The scale of the 2025 result is best read against the preceding seasons. In 2023, domestic trips reached 78 million — a record at the time. In 2024, the market expanded to roughly 90 million trips, with annual growth of about 16 percent. The 2025 estimate of about 97 million therefore extends the series to a new peak, but at a markedly slower pace: 5.84 percent for trips and 3.69 percent for booked room nights.
Interim data confirm the deceleration. Over the first ten months of 2025, Russians made 76 million domestic trips, 4.8 percent more than in the same period of the previous year. Taken together, the ten-month figure and the full-year estimate describe a market that kept growing but lost much of the momentum of 2024.
- 2023 — 78 million domestic trips, a record at the time;
- 2024 — about 90 million trips, annual growth of about 16 percent;
- January–October 2025 — 76 million trips, up 4.8 percent year on year;
- full-year 2025 — about 97 million trips, up 5.84 percent, with booked room nights up 3.69 percent.
Why the boom lost momentum
The union attributes the slowdown to a combination of four factors, only one of which is structural:
- limited hotel capacity — the available room stock constrains how many guests destinations can host;
- the disaster in Anapa;
- the strengthening of the ruble by about 25 percent;
- a cold summer in the European part of the country.
One structural constraint, three cyclical shocks
Read together, the list separates a long-term bottleneck from short-term shocks. The shortage of rooms is a capacity problem that the industry can only address with new construction, while the Anapa disaster, the currency move and the unfavorable summer weather are events of a different nature: they hit demand within a single season. That distinction matters for the outlook, because cyclical factors can reverse while the room-stock constraint persists.
The 2026 outlook: about 90 million trips
For next year, the Russian Union of Travel Industry forecasts about 90 million domestic trips — that is, around the 2024 level and below the 2025 record, with a small decline possible. If the forecast holds, 2025 will stand out as the peak of the current growth cycle: three consecutive record years — 78 million in 2023, about 90 million in 2024 and about 97 million in 2025 — followed by a plateau.
For travelers and the industry alike, the message of the 2025 season is that the era of double-digit expansion in domestic tourism has paused. The market remains far above its 2023 record, but the question for the coming years is no longer how fast demand grows — it is whether supply, above all hotel rooms, can catch up with it.
Leave a comment