The May holidays usually kick off Crimea's tourist season, but the web cameras on the Russian-seized peninsula show empty beaches and streets. None of the expected millions of tourists are in sight yet as Ukraine and Russia both take holidays on May 1-2 for Labor Day and on May 9 for Victory Day.
Earlier, the self-proclaimed prime minister of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, told journalists that the peninsula expects to see at least three million tourists this year, which is half of last year’s total, even if the railway connection with Russia that goes through Ukraine does not get restarted.
Tourism experts, however, did better in predicting Crimea’s grim reality under Russian occupation. The Russian Union
of Tourism told Echo of Moscow radio station that the tourist season in Crimea to fail due to
transport problems.
The spokeswoman of the union, Irina Turina, said about 600
flights are needed to ensure a good enough connection between Russia and
the peninsula, though it is impossible to provide them so far.
Neither warm and sunny weather nor a special transport scheme developed
by the Russian Transportation Ministry is so far helping Ukraine’s Russian-annexed peninsula to fill its hotels and beaches with tourists for the May holidays.
According to the Crimean Resorts and Tourism Ministry’s official website, almost 6 million people visited Crimea in 2013. In the last two years, the number of tourists who came to Crimea for May holidays had been growing by some 20 percent every year.