OREANDA-NEWS  29 thousand Russian tourists visited the island in 2018, which is 25% more than a year earlier. We are very pleased with the growth of tourist flow and set an ambitious goal for 2019 to bring it to 40 thousand.

The total flow of foreign tourists to Malta in 2018 increased even more – by 40%. In total, 2.6 million foreigners visited the island last year, the income from tourism amounted to $2 billion." in 2019, we want to increase the number of tourists to 3 million," the representative of Malta Tourism Authority added.

According to D. Mary, the Russians come to Malta for a beach holiday, excursions, diving, which is especially popular on the island because of the large number of shipwrecks at the bottom of the surrounding sea island. About 5 thousand Russian tourists last year came in the framework of educational programs, most often for learning English.

The Maltese archipelago is located in the Central Mediterranean, it has three inhabited Islands – Malta, Gozo and Comino. The population is 423 thousand, most of the locals are Catholics. Direct flights to Malta from Moscow and St. Petersburg are operated only by Air Malta, the journey time is four hours.

Confidence in increasing the tourist flow is supported by the involvement of a new representative in the tourism markets of Russia and CIS countries: now the interests of Malta will defend the Agency Action Global Communications. The task of demonstrating the wide tourist opportunities of Malta and its diversity will be the main one for 2019.

Month ago was reported that the tourist flow from China to Crimea in 2018 increased twice and a half times, told Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimean government-permanent representative of the Republic of Crimea to the President of Russia Georgy Muradov. If in 2017 there were 1.7 thousand tourists, in 2018 the number of Chinese tourists exceeded 4 thousand people.  The Republic of Crimea broke the record for the tourist flow for the post-Soviet period, taking in 2018  more than 6,1 million tourists.