Ukraine's Tourism Chief Reflects on Resilience After a Year of War

25.08.2023 - 14:01 / skift.com / Dawit Habtemariam

It’s been over a year since Russia invaded Ukraine. The war has had ripple effects on the global tourism economy. Ukraine and its tourism sector have suffered immensely in lives, infrastructure and more, but after a year into the conflict, they are seeing some bright spots.

While international travel remains closed, Ukraine is seeing a gradual recovery in domestic travel, especially in its Western region. Domestic travel sits at 50 percent of its pre-pandemic level. The tourism agency is promoting travel internally and working with international tourism businesses to support its recovery.

In this conversation with Skift at ITB Berlin, Mariana Oleskiv, chairperson of State Agency for Tourism Development of Ukraine, talks about what’s changed and hasn’t changed for Ukraine’s tourism sector since the war started last year. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Skift: The war actually started in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. In 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the help of Belarus. Can you go into the disruption the 2022 invasion caused?

Mariana Oleskiv: Yeah. So first, of course, there was to stop all air connection with Ukraine on February 24th night of 2022. International travel stopped. But we still had journalists, international organizations, some missions. So last year, we had two million international visits to Ukraine. So, comparing to 2021, we had four million, but it was a Covid year. In 2019, we had, if I’m not mistaken, nine million.

In 2014, we had 14 million, so this was the numbers of visitors crossing borders. Of course, a lot of these people who crossed our borders in 2014 were Russians, and then we lost that market, obviously. We stopped any cooperation and tourism with Russia. Until this full-scale invasion, a lot of their citizens were crossing borders with neighboring areas to visit relatives. And Belarus was a big market before this full-scale invasion. And then, others, we’ve had Poland, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Israel, Germany, United States, France, Italy, and then we worked with Saudi Arabia in 2021. They were a big market for us in terms of tourism because we made visa free for them, and that was our big plan for 2022.

So our main focus started being domestic travel. Starting the summer of 2022, we launched this little campaign that was, “Get Inspired by Ukraine” for local market. That we are fighting, we are working for the victory, but we still need some place where we can breathe and relax and for a little while, maybe don’t watch news too much and enjoy the nature, something spend time with the family. And this is what Ukrainian resorts can give you, and that nature, our nature, our lakes, our mountains, our forests inspire you