What is happening with tourism in Crimea
You don't need to be a tourism professional to realize the fundamental incompatibility of tourism and military operations.
So, to understand the realities of the 2023 Crimean tourist season, it is enough to read the list of attacks by air and sea-based drones on military targets in Crimea from June and July 2023, then look at the photo of instructions for tourists to undergo inspection when crossing the Kerch Strait bridge.
During the first two months of the summer vacation season of 2023, at least 39 attacks using drones and missiles on military and infrastructure facilities occurred in occupied Crimea. Ten of them directly impacted transportation – road and/or rail.
the South Coast, i.e., Greater Yalta and Greater Alushta, have been free of air attacks
Crimea's leading resort and tourist region, . However, this does not mean that Russian tourists feel safe there.
The authors, who know from their many years of experience what the embankments and squares of the main resort towns of the Crimean peninsula look like during the high season, confidently conclude that in 2023 there will simply be no mass tourist flow to Crimea as such.
Moreover, there is every reason to assume that, in the coming days, there may be a significant outflow of those tourists who dared to plan a vacation in the occupied Crimea during the war or send their children to the peninsula (who were forced into the role of human shields).
When you see official estimates of the tourist flow to Crimea in the media, you must understand that they are propaganda and are overstated two, three, or even four times. They consider everyone who enters the peninsula, including the additional population of about 1 million people, including the military and their families, who moved to Crimea from Russia after the occupation in 2014 and may travel to Russia and return several times a year. The number of overnight stays in tourist facilities is not published. Due to the occupation, tourism logistics in Crimea have changed radically and continue to change. Before the occupation, in the 2000s, the peninsula had stable tourism inflow patterns: 67% by rail, 20% by car, and 13% by air.
In 2015-2017, according to the illegal occupation “authorities” of Crimea," 45% of the total number of visitors to Crimea arrived by air, 41% by ferry, and 14% by car. On May 15, 2018, they opened the road part of the bridge across the Kerch Strait; then the passenger railway on December 25, 2019. They began freight transport on June 30, 2020, for freight transport. In 2020, 70% of people came to the occupied Crimea by road, 25% by air, and 5% by rail.
After the full-scale invasion, the only Crimean airport in Simferopol ceased to function, and the bridge across the Kerch Strait was repeatedly attacked and damaged, meaning that the flow of air tourists ceased to exist, and the use of the Kerch Strait bridge became risky.
It should be noted that the reporting system for the number of tourists is a "statistical tradition" of the Soviet era. In those years, this indicator was calculated by the amount of bread sold based on calculations from when bread was produced by state-owned enterprises (usually 1-2 in each city). At the time, this estimate made sense. After the transition of bread production to many private bakeries, such statistics became inadequate.
In 2010-2013, the Crimean tourism industry began to transition to calculating the volume of tourist flow through the internationally accepted indicator of "number of overnight stays." However, they did not complete the change to this system when the occupation began.
In such circumstances, it is possible to estimate the actual number of tourists through the indicator of the "average length of stay of tourists in Crimea." In the 1980s (when the maximum number of tourists was reached – 8.3 million people in 1988), one tourist's average length of stay in Crimea was 20-24 days. In the USSR, this corresponded to the standard length of an annual vacation.
In the 2000s, tourists' average length of stay in Crimea decreased to 10-14 days. This was in line with new trends in the labor market. During the years of occupation of Crimea, according to local statistics, this figure dropped to 7 days.
For example, the occupation authorities of Crimea reported that in 2019, Crimea received 7.43 million visitors. Taking into account the data on the average length of stay of a tourist of 7 days, the actual number of tourists compared to the statistics of the 1980s (8 million people, average length of stay 20-24 days) can be estimated at about 2-2.5 million people.
The actual size of the tourist flow to the occupied Crimea before the full-scale invasion of last year was up to 2.5 million people a year, which is 2-2.5 times less than the estimated number of tourists before the occupation (5-6 million people, 10-14 days) and 3.2 times less than in Soviet times (8 million people, 20-24 days).
The actual size of the tourist flow to the occupied peninsula in 2022 can be estimated at up to 1.5 million people. In the current year, 2023, according to the available data on the decrease in bookings, it can be calculated at up to 1 million people per year (provided that the 2023 season will continue in the form of "extreme tourism under fire").
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