Moscow authorities began buying data from Aviasales to develop tourism.

Aviasales clarified to the newspaper that we are talking about the sale of data, but did not reveal the details of the agreement. The committee explained that the information is necessary for an objective evaluation of the processes in the tourism industry.

The data collected will allow you to analyze the relationship between supply and demand, understand the needs of the target audience and develop suitable projects. The agency plans to publish the monitoring results in the public domain.

Mostourism will use Aviastats information to evaluate the geography of trips, the age composition of tourists, the proportion of families with children, the timing of trip planning and the availability of flights. This will help to more effectively prepare for a decrease in the off-season tourist flow, noted Yana Khrestik, business development director at Aviasales.

Mosturizm emphasized that they use many data sources, including departmental statistics, surveys, information from SberAnalytics, MTS, Hotel Advisors, international agencies, tour operators and other market participants.

The growth of tourist flow to Moscow is gradually slowing down. According to Rosstat, between January and September 2024, 9.01 million people stayed in hotels in the capital, 10.2% more than a year before. In 2023, this figure increased by 12.8%. At the same time, the Moscow City Council estimates that in the first half of 2024 alone, the city received 12.2 million guests.

In 2023, according to the committee, Moscow will be visited by 24.5 million travelers who spent 1.3 trillion rubles. By 2030, the authorities hope to increase their number to 52 million people and their income to 3.6 trillion rubles.

Vice President of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR), Sergei Romashkin, stressed that the analysis of tourism statistics is important to evaluate the effectiveness of budgetary investments in the sector. However, he doubts that data on air arrivals alone provides a complete picture of tourist flows. For him, the most important information is data on travelers’ routes in the city and their expenses, which can be provided by banks and telecommunications operators.

The Aviasales service has existed since 2007 and is an important search engine for airline tickets. According to Similarweb, in October 2024 its audience was 18.9 million people. The company has been developing the Aviastats analysis platform since 2021; Their data was acquired mainly by airlines and airports.