Holidaymakers Choose St. Petersburg Over Moscow
Published: May 8, 2013 (Issue # 1758)
St. Petersburg easily beat Moscow at the most popular destination among Russian travelers for the May holidays, a leading online hotel booking site said Monday.
The number of travelers who booked hotel rooms in St. Petersburg was four times that in Moscow, the second-favorite destination among Russians this month, Oktogo.ru said.
St. Petersburg also leads in average duration of stay. Travelers on average planned to spend more than three nights in the northern capital.
But Moscow didn’t fare too poorly compared to the third most popular destination, Kazan. Hotel bookings in the capital were three times more than Kazan.
Oktogo.ru did not offer precise figures.
Rounding out the top 10 list of other popular domestic destinations are Yaroslavl, Vyborg, Veliky Novgorod, Kostroma, Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk.
Among foreign cities, the most popular was Kiev, followed by Riga, Prague, Helsinki, Vilnius, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam and Tallinn.
Paris and Prague lead in duration of stay, with five and four nights, respectively.
Most Russian travelers prefer to spend up to a week on vacation during the extended May holiday break, second in duration only to the New Year holidays, online travel service Aviasales.ru said Monday.
It reported 36.5 percent of air travelers spend five to seven days on vacation between April 29 and May 9, while 30.8 percent will take more than a week off. An additional 32.7 percent of travelers will limit their vacations to three to four days.
The public holidays on May Day on May 1 and Victory Day on May 9 provide many people with a way to stretch out their vacations without having to use up as many vacation days from work.