Travel Trends for Eastern Europe

I spent the afternoon at a Europe Travel Show here in Perth, Australia, curious to see how much attention Eastern Europe's getting from potential tourists here.

For so long in Australia, Europe has just meant Western Europe, Southern Europe, Scandinavia and Northern Europe, and of course English-speaking Britain and Ireland. So when I went along today to a big travel show focused on Europe here in Perth, Western Australia, I was more than curious to see what kind of representation Eastern European countries received.

At first glance, all the brochures point to London, Paris and Italy, although a small few did feature Croatia on their covers. But dig a little deeper, and I was pleased to find that Eastern Europe and Russia is getting more coverage on tours than in previous years.

Some of the hotspots were kind of obvious: Prague, Budapest and the Croatian coast are clearly on the radar as far as travels in Eastern Europe go. What also featured very highly were cruises in Russia, usually from Moscow to St Petersburg and including detours to Golden Ring towns. More inclusive tours also took in Danube routes and destinations throughout the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia, with a smattering of interest in Poland. The places that almost rated no mentions included Ukraine and Belarus - but more disappointingly the beautiful Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These last three are so open to tourism, and probably safer than many of the other destinations, but still don't seem to be on the "must-go" lists of tourists here. Perhaps this is a good thing for us - not so many tourists to compete with for space at the best attractions - but it's not good for the Baltic economies.