Azernews.Az

By Rasana Gasimova

Azerbaijan Tourism Board has launched a strategic partnership with famous Russian travel platform Aviasales.

The partnership aims to increase the tourist flow to the country through joint marketing projects and networking with users through the support service, the State Tourism Agency reported.

The first project implemented as part of cooperation with Aviasales will be an online test competition. Participants of this competition held from February 12 to March 9, should create their own itineraries through Azerbaijan on the https://azerbaijan.aviasales.ru/website and share them on social media. The winner will get a plane ticket to Azerbaijan.

The winner will be randomly selected on March 16. Only citizens of Russia aged over 18 can participate in the competition.

Speaking about the project, the CEO of Azerbaijan Tourism Board Florian Sengstschmid said that the Russian market is one of Azerbaijan’s priorities.

“We are glad that one of the leading tourism platforms in the world is our strategic partner. Together with Aviasales we want to inform tourists about what Azerbaijan has to offer and invite them to have another look at the country,” he said.

According to Aviasales research, the number of tourists traveling from St. Petersburg to Azerbaijan increased by 60 percent, and those visiting the country from Moscow by 20 percent.

Moreover, the number of tourists visiting from Kaliningrad, Irkutsk, Samara and Novosibirsk has increased by 70-75 percent.

Yaroslav Stepanyuk, Head of New Markets at Aviasales, said that Azerbaijan is one of the favorite destinations of Russian tourists.

“We are well familiar with this market. Since last fall, our team released the Azerbaijani version of the Aviasales platform. Thus, in addition to serving Azerbaijani travellers, we are promoting the tourism potential of Azerbaijan in foreign markets,” he said.

Note that in 2019, the number of Russian citizens who visited Azerbaijan amounted to 932,000 people, which is 6.1 percent more than in 2018.

In January 2020, Azerbaijan was visited by 67,884 Russian citizens, which is 20.5 percent more compared to the same period in 2019.

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