Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Good for Business, Russia, Tourism

"Compared with our neighbors in the Nordic region, our growth has been faster," Tarmo Mutso, director for tourism development at Enterprise Estonia, said at a press briefing on Monday. He said growth in Estonia was also faster than in Europe on the average.

The number of Russian tourists visiting Estonia moved up last year after two years of decline. The number of Russian tourists visiting Estonia was 394,000 in 2015 and 413,000 in 2016. Even the latter represents a drop of 40 percent from the all time high of 679,000 registered in 2013.

For the first time since 2013, extra cars were added to trains bringing Russian visitors to Estonia for the year-end holiday at the end of 2016. Other key events attracting Russian visitors here are sports, cultural and gastronomy events.

"We continue to consider Russian tourists as important and make efforts toward getting back to the record levels that we used to have," Mutso said. "Speaking about the potential for sudden growth, our expectations concerning the Russian market remain very high," Mutso said.

Kulli Karing, president of the Estonian Travel and Tourism Association, said the fact that a large number of travel agencies in Russia went bankrupt and a trust crisis emerged was one of the reasons for the steep decline in Russian tourist numbers. The business of travel agencies in Russia started recovering last year.