Despite the second wave of coronavirus infection, Norilsk residents are actively planning where to spend the New Year holidays. We’ve found out which destinations are popular with the inhabitants of the North this year.
If last year Thailand, Vietnam and the Dominican Republic were in the top preferences of Norilsk residents for trips abroad on New Year’s holidays, this year the townspeople prefer Turkey, Egypt and Tanzania, said the manager of one of Norilsk’s travel companies.
In 2019, customers rarely chose Turkey for the New Year holidays: the air temperature at this period reaches 18 degrees Celsius during the day. Today, a significant advantage for tourists is the fact that when entering the country there are no problems with the COVID-19 test, and hotels have come up with a winter entertainment program. Heat lovers buy tickets to Tanzania. By the way, this direction was previously inaccessible, but now charter flights from Moscow and Krasnoyarsk fly, the PCR test is also not needed.
In Egypt, the authorities require to have a negative test for coronavirus. It is quite simple to provide it: if you fly through Cairo, then the research results obtained in Russia should be translated into English. If tourists choose the resorts of Hurghada or Sharm El Sheikh, the presence of a new type of virus is detected by laboratories at the airports. This simplified system has increased the demand for Egyptian tours.
Both the popular Maldives and the United Arab Emirates are open to Russians. However, the northerners practically do not give preference to them. This is due to a more complicated test process: it should be taken in certain laboratories, in Norilsk there is only one. In addition, you need to install a tracking application, plus only two companies fly by air, so the cost of the tours is much higher.
If we talk about traveling within the country, the residents of Norilsk prefer the ski resorts of Sochi. Sochi is cheaper. Tours for domestic tourism are bought less, but this is because tourists travel around Russia on their own.
However, Rospotrebnadzor still recommends the residents of the Krasnoyarsk Territory spending the New Year’s holidays at home, with their families, because of the coronavirus.
Text: Ekaterina Elkanova, Photo: open sources
