With Ukraine at war, officials hope to bring tourism back to areas away from fighting

Why? You may only get nuked or nailed by a cruise missile. What’s the big deal?

I am not going!

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel I'll pass...
..."A lot of people in Ukraine still don't feel it's OK to go on vacation or travel," Mariana Oleskiv, chair of Ukraine's State Agency for Tourism Development, tells NPR.

More than seven months into the war, "we understand that many people in our country live in very bad conditions, that some people don't have electricity and our soldiers sleep in trenches," she says.

According to agency data provided to NPR, domestic tourism, which the agency defines as leaving your home city for leisure, increased 24% between 2019 and 2021. Nearly 4.2 million foreign tourists visited Ukraine in 2021 — a 30% jump over the previous year.

Oleskiv says she forecasted that the trend would continue into 2022, but then the war started.

Trips into Ukraine by international tourists are down between 85% and 90%, says Oleskiv. Tour operators in safer areas of Ukraine reported to the government that occupancy rates are down 50% this summer compared to last. She says tourism in places such as Odesa and other parts of southern Ukraine closer to the front line of the conflict has "stopped completely."...