Tourism boom in Ukraine: 300,000 visitors daily

DHAKA: Some 300,000 people crossed Ukrainian border during EURO 2012 match days, reports Ukraine’s Ministry of Infrastructure.

According to the Master Card’s Global Destination Cities Index, Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, the venue of EURO 2012 final, ranked higher than Polish Warsaw, co-host of the football championship.

This June the daily number of people arriving in Ukraine grew by 90,000 compared to the same period of 2011, said Ukraine`s Minister of Infrastructure Borys Kolesnikov.

On June 11, the match day between Ukraine and Sweden, over 100,000 fans visited Kyiv’s fan-zone on Maydan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Sq.).

It is expected that during the tournament’s second round of the group stage the number of tourists will exceed even the current rate.

“After the first round of the championship Ukrainian airports started to receive more applications for accepting charter flights,” commented the minister.

He believes this was caused by the foreign fans who have already visited Ukraine and shared their experiences with friends and family back home.

There are four Ukrainian cities that host the European football championship: Kyiv,Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Lviv. These are the cities that attract the most foreign tourists in June 2012.

According to Master Card`s Global Destination Cities Index, the number of people visiting Kyiv would grow by 18.5 percent, reported Liga Net.

In the Master Card`s rating, Kyiv occupied higher position than the Polish capital Warsaw, another EURO 2012 co-host.

Kyiv also ranked higher than Montreal, Boston, Rio-de-Janeiro, etc. Most of the guests visiting Kyiv in 2012 will come from Moscow, London, Frankfurt, Tel-Aviv, and Munich, reports the index.

Moreover, the tourists tend to spend more money on their visits to Kyiv: in 2012 the expenditures index is expected to grow by 29.8 percent.

Previously, Erste Bank research unit issued a report indicating that each of the expected 500,000 visitors to Ukraine will spend the average of EUR 800 over their three to four day stay in the country.

The Index of Global Destination Cities, created by MasterCard Worldwide, is an annual research program that describes and analyzes the global network of 132 destination cities and how they are connected through cross-border air travel and associated expenditures.

BDST: 2103 HRS, JUN 14, 2012
Edited by:
Mohammed Humayun Kabir, Sr Newsroom Editor
M. Mahbub Alam, Asst Output Editor