On 24 February 2022, Switzerland Tourism ST’s agenda included the 2022 Annual Media Conference – taking stock of achievements in 2021, post-pandemic there was light on the horizon for ST and the tourism industry. Or that’s what we would have thought. Once again, however, world politics set the pace in a frightening and merciless manner. Russia attacked Ukraine just at that time. War on European soil once again, in 2022 – who would expected such a thing to happen?

The events came thick and fast, and so did the headlines. Instead of the annual exhibition, ST CEO Martin Nydegger now had to assess what the war meant for Swiss tourism and for ST.

All of ST’s activities in Russia were immediately suspended. But the main concern was first and foremost the affected population. The concerns and considerations for Swiss tourism and ST’s work were secondary to this.

Importance of the Russian market
Nonetheless: Russia is a market of Swiss tourism promotion, albeit a relatively small one, at least until 2019 with less than 1% of the market share (357,000 overnight stays). This is in the order of magnitude between Brazil and Austria. However, Russians are affluent guests who often also travel in the low season (January, spring).

The usually strong winter months of January and February (until the start of the war) had still promised a record winter for Russian guests. 28,000 hotel overnight stays had been generated. This was then followed by the invasion. Due to increasingly difficult travel conditions (only inconvenient and expensive flights, discontinuation of international payments, restrictive visa issuance), only 103,799 overnight stays were then recorded for the whole of 2022 (-71% compared with 2019).

Unlike Russia, Ukraine is not a source market for ST and has never been actively targeted.

The ST Moscow office reacts
The Moscow office remained open with minimal staff, not least to maintain the network of tour operators and media on the ground and to ensure the flow of information. However, the three employees were fully assigned to projects in other ST markets and other ST projects, as well as to tasks within the Swiss embassy in Moscow.