MOSCOW, September 27. /TASS/. The number of tourists who came to Moscow from China has increased sixfold this year compared to the same period last year, said Evgeny Kozlov, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Mayor and the Government of Moscow; Chairman of the Committee for Tourism of the City of Moscow, at the plenary session within the framework of the Moscow Tourism conference.

"China is now number one in terms of inbound traffic from non-CIS countries, including for business purposes. Fifty flights a week fly from Moscow to China now, which is a lot, and those planes are quite large. We host six times more Chinese than we had last year, compared to the same period," he said.

Kozlov noted that the flow of visitors from the Middle East is also quite large. They choose five-star hotels in the Central Administrative District of the capital especially often. "The 90% occupancy rate in July was thanks in large part to Middle Eastern tourists. They come here; they are really interested. We talked to the Minister of Tourism of Egypt, he told us that we have an ideal climate," Kozlov said.

He added that the capital's authorities have an ambitious goal to increase tourist traffic from Latin American countries. "The transport arm now makes their flight to Russia unprofitable. But there are millions of people there who can afford it, so there is a potential in this area," Kozlov said.