Vitebsk among top 10 most popular historical cities in CIS
Vitebsk has been named among the CIS most popular historical cities for tourists in 2016, BelTA learned from the analytics agency TurStat.
TurStat analyzed the tours and data provided by regional travel agencies in order to compile the ranking. Almost each of the top 10 cities is situated in Central Asia and Transcaucasia: Turkestan, Taraz (Kazakhstan), Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva (Uzbekistan), Ganja (Azerbaijan), Gyumri (Armenia), Khujand (Tajikistan), and Mary (Turkmenistan). Vitebsk is ranked 6th in the list.
According to TurStat, in 2016 Vitebsk and Vitebsk Oblast hosted 166,000 tourists. This number includes 34,000 foreign tourists, among them 30,000 were from Russia. The regional hotels accommodated over 200,000 guests, one-third of them from the CIS.