River cruise season begins in Moscow

Cruise liners Mikhail Bulgakov, Konstantin Simonov, Dmitry Furmanov and Lebedinoye Ozero leave the Northern River Terminal on 30 April 2019, says press center of Moscow Canal. 

These are mostly weekend tours popular among Moscow residents. Apart from conventional routes, new ones are offered as the demand for travelling along the rivers of Russia is on the rise. Over the recent three years the flow of river tourists has increased by 20% with the recent navigation season having seen about 290,000 tourists.

“The popularity of river cruises grows by 7-15% every year. The loading of voyages is remains on a high level exceeding 90%”, says German Yelyanyushkin, head of Moscow Canal.

The high demand for the season of 2019 was marked as early as in July 2018.

Cruises along the rivers in Central Russia can last from 3 to 26 days. The most popular are long tours from Moscow to Astrakhan, from Samara, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan to Saint-Petersburg and Moscow. The demand is also on the rise for weekend voyages – from Moscow to Uglich, Myshkin or Tver.

Special attention is paid to cruises between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg with the calls to Uglich, Myshkin as well as the islands of Valaam and Kizhy. Among the north-western directions, the tour from Moscow to Solovetskiye islands is the hunted one. Other popular tours are Volga cruises with visits to Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd and Astrakhan.

Key cruise operators in the Moscow Region are those of the nonprofit partnership “River Alliance”: Vodohod, Mosturflot and Sozvezdiye. The above-mentioned shipping companies account for about 80% of Russia’s cruise market.

“Despite the stable growth of river tours, they involve only 0.6% of all Moscow agglomeration residents (48 million people: 30 million residents and 18 million tourists). The cruise segment has a serious potential for the development. Our task is to tell all Russian citizens about river transport and holiday. Water cruises in the Moscow Basin should involve at least 1 million people per navigation season, up from the current 300,000 tourists. The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, the Federal Marine and River Transport Agency, Moscow Canal and its partners spare no effort to attract as many people as possible with a focus on young people”, summarized German Yelyanyushkin.

State-owned FSUE Moscow Canal is the largest water transport and inland shipping sector facility and acts as a public administration body for management of inland waterways in 12 regions of Central Russia. The authority manages and operates 235 hydraulic engineering facilities and 3,842 km of inland waterways.