OREANDA-NEWS This summer, Russian families began to actively buy vouchers to children's camps in their region, rather than at the traditionally popular resorts of the Black Sea, and the demand for organized trips of children abroad has also revived, said Tatyana Ivanova, head of the committee of the Russian Union of Travel Industry for children's recreation. She also noted the rise in the cost of recreation in camps.

"Several factors influenced the choice of parents. The camps themselves have risen in price - from 15% to 30%. Plus a train ticket - by 15-20%, flights - from 20% to 30% in some regions, and buses, also depending on the region, by 30-40%. Accordingly, the camp in its region, that is, without a long road, turned out to be much more accessible. Do not forget about the continuing anxiety, which is why parents are not inclined to send their children far from home, primarily to the south," Ivanova said.

Another reason was that some regions provided subsidies to parents for children's holidays in their regions.

"As a result, parents were more likely to buy trips to local camps, and most of them were 100% loaded this summer. In some regions, the season is still ongoing, shifts have been extended until mid-September," the expert explained.

Svetlana Petrova, director of the Pioneer children's camp in the Leningrad Region, a member of the PCT Committee on children's recreation, also said that prices for vouchers had been kept within the official inflation.

"Prices have increased by a maximum of 7-8%, although we have not reduced the duration of the holiday," she said.

Tour operators engaged in children's holidays have also noticed a drop in demand for sea camps.

"The Krasnodar Territory, having turned out to be a virtual monopoly in the field of children's recreation at sea, since Crimea disappeared, and the Azov coast accepted children from new territories, raised prices by 15-30%. Accordingly, tour operators who have historically sent children's groups to the sea from their regions, including in the package and transport, have faced a noticeable drop in demand. For example, according to colleagues from the Arkhangelsk, Sverdlovsk, and Moscow regions, the decrease was at least 20-40%," Ivanova said.

According to her, tour operators were forced to reduce their quotas in the Black Sea camps. The camps, in turn, compensated for them at the expense of other categories, for example, children of employees of various enterprises, and did not suffer from underloading.

As the expert noted, compared with 2023, the demand for foreign children's holidays has increased, although it is still far from the pre-pandemic volumes. And if parents used to choose a vacation at sea for their children, now educational tours are a priority.