Moscow Shifts Tourism Focus To China

Being a Las Vegas native, I have long nurtured a morbid fascination with tourist attractions with political messages. Regimes with strong authoritarian tendencies sometimes initiate truly massive showpiece architecture projects, often in an unconvincing attempt to show the outside world that everything is alright. For example, North Korea’s 105-story Ryugyong Hotel is currently the world’s tallest unoccupied building. Construction began in 1987 and has cost 1% of the country’s GDP, but it is still largely unfinished on the inside and has never hosted guests. In a more recent example, more hotels are still going up in Turkmenistan’s massive five-star tourist complex at Awaza on the Caspian Sea, but the resort’s existing hotels are largely empty even at peak season. The bottom line: tourism is often just as much about geopolitical image as it is about drawing in people who want to spend money.

So, when Moscow launched a campaign emphasizing its tourist-friendly credentials, eyebrows were raised. While Moscow has always maintained a steady stream of tourists its many historic sites, from the treasures of the czars to the Red Square and crenellated St. Basil’s, for much of the Cold War era and beyond, Russia’s global narratives leaned heavily on its energy clout and status as the political center of an important energy-rich state. That is changing. The new message is that Moscow is doing fine without the West and has friends in China, India, Iran and other places.

Moscow’s New Tourism Pitch

The Russians are betting that tourists to Moscow will carry home the image (and message) of a high-tech metropolis on par with anything in China or the West. This is not merely about filling hotel rooms or boosting restaurateurs’ bottom lines. Though even by those conventional metrics, the numbers are striking. Tourism already delivers meaningful tax revenue and measurable GDP impact for the city, a return on investment impressive by regional standards and remarkable given the context of Western companies departing en masse since 2022.

However, Moscow’s tourism boom is ultimately a political project designed to showcase an alternative model of development that is illiberal, technologically ambitious, and self-confident, even at a moment when three centuries of Russian Western engagement started by Peter the Great seems to be being deliberately destroyed by the war in Ukraine.

Today, Moscow is seeking to cement its ties with the non-Western world, including its BRICS friends. Moscow’s new image mirrors wider trends seen in Russia. No longer is the goal to convince Westerners and Europeans that Russia is “just as Western” as they are. Rather, Moscow wants to differentiate itself from the West and appeal to Arab, Chinese, and Indian tourists.

Before 2014, Moscow’s tourist map was unmistakably European. Flights from the West filled Muscovite airports. Westerners featured prominently in the city’s museums, parks, and metro stations. Russia’s annexation of Crimea proved to be a mere hiccup; the gravitational pull of European travelers remained strong. All of that ended after February 2022. The war in Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions brought the steady flow of Western tourists to a halt.

Rather than allowing its capital to become geographically isolated or economically dormant, Russia engineered a reorientation of tourism. In 2023, Moscow welcomed roughly 2.3 million foreign tourists, overwhelmingly from China, India, Turkey, and Iran. Travelers from Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and Central Asia have also surged, filling the vacuum left by the Europeans. Arrivals grew during the first half of 2025 at an impressive rate of 10% year on year.

These increases in tourism track almost perfectly with the realignment of Russia’s diplomatic and economic partnerships. They are, in effect, a living map of the geopolitical world Moscow wants to build. China is obviously in the lead. It’s not just about visa-free travel or cheaper direct flights. Cultural tourism and language exchanges are encouraged and subsidised. The last two years have been declared the Years of Culture of China and Russia, with Russia’s capital hosting exhibitions of contemporary Chinese artists and the Shenzhen Opera play “Wing Chun” in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater.

The Moscow Model Of Tourism

Tourism and travel matter. They deliver something political speeches cannot: lived experience. For millions of visitors from the Global South, Moscow is not an abstraction shaped by Western reporting but a physical space, one that is walkable, safe, digitally integrated, and surprisingly affordable. Those impressions stick, even if they are those of a showpiece capital rather than truly representative of Russia, which is vast and in many places, underdeveloped and only very sparsely populated.

Russia wants tourists to witness what the city portrays as a successful alternative to Western liberal urbanism. Moscow’s government has invested for years in smart-city infrastructure, advanced security surveillance systems, AI-enabled public services, and high-speed digital connectivity. Those investments are now central to the capital’s global branding. The authorities brag about crime rates plummeting over the last decade and Moscow surging in global safety rankings well above its Western megacity peers like New-York and London.

Moscow presents itself as a “city of the future,” where mobility, safety, and convenience are integrated through technology. Real-time transit apps, robots cleaning the streets and delivering pizza, QR code-based museum tickets, cashless payments, AI-driven translation tools, and ubiquitous public Wi-Fi all work toward the same end: cultivating a sense that Moscow has leapt ahead of many Western capitals in digital modernization.

Moscow’s tourist branding has far more in common with Shanghai, Shenzhen, or Beijing than London or Paris. For non-Western visitors, especially those from countries partnering with Russia on technology, energy, and defense, this narrative carries weight. Moscow becomes a showcase city capable of innovation even under pressure, not one reliant on Western institutions or capital markets for its modernization. That message is embedded in every seamless tourist interaction.

The city is also undertaking quieter yet significant infrastructure upgrades for foreign guests. Directional signs in multiple languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, and English, are expanding across the metro and central boulevards. Hotels and restaurants now report a sharp increase in the number of staff who speak English and Mandarin. A proliferation of online guides caters specifically to Middle Eastern and Asian travelers, such as Moscow’s new digital tourism hub designed for Gulf tourists. Major city festivals, long part of Moscow’s civic identity, have been retooled to appeal to global audiences.

The Tourist Pivot Challenge

What makes Moscow’s tourism rebound so striking is that it defies the core logic of Western pressure. Since 2022, Russia has lacked direct flights from most European capitals. Its aviation industry has been forced into wrenching restructuring and airframe cannibalization under sanctions. Airspace restrictions complicate even the simplest itineraries. And yet the city’s foreign visitor numbers have increased.

This points to a broader geopolitical trend: Russia’s deepening integration with Asian and Middle Eastern transportation networks and economies. Chinese travel agencies now heavily promote visa-free trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Indian tour operators are increasingly offering Moscow as a winter-break destination. Massive Turkish and Gulf carriers have become critical transit conduits.

Chinese travel behavior is especially telling. Travel industry reports indicate that Chinese tourists are now rerouting away from Japan, long a top destination, toward Moscow, partly for political reasons, partly economic, and partly out of curiosity about Russia’s political pivot and comparatively exotic culture. Indian travelers display similar patterns, drawn by both affordability and novelty. These shifts are geopolitical signals.

Tourism as a Russian Soft Power Tool

Tourism has always been a tool of soft power. Cities curate their past imperial identities to project political or cultural narratives. Just think of Rome, Madrid, or Lisbon. Paris has its timeless sophistication, Singapore its efficient modernity, and Dubai its aspirational hyper-luxury. Moscow invites tourists to witness Russia’s Asian expanse, might, resilience under sanctions, and technological ambition despite international isolation.

The strategy is not without contradictions. Moscow’s prosperity contrasts sharply with broader economic headwinds across the Russian hinterland. And while the city wants to portray itself as globally connected, a tourism-driven charm offensive cannot erase the war in Ukraine from international consciousness, nor can it change the calculus of Western governments maintaining sanctions.

But soft power is not about erasing facts; it is about reframing them. Moscow’s pitch is that Western narratives of Russian decline are inaccurate, and visitors can see for themselves a capital that is safe, modern, prosperous, and technologically advanced. For travelers skeptical of Western narratives, that resonates. The more tourists who experience Moscow firsthand, the more Moscow hopes its political narrative gains traction.

Ultimately, Moscow’s tourism renaissance is a deliberate geopolitical counter-narrative: a city offering a vision of modernity apart from – and despite — Western liberal traditions. Whether this becomes a durable soft-power advantage remains to be seen. But Moscow has understood something critical about international politics in 2025: in a polarized world, even vacations can become an influence operation.