A city tour bus drives on a street during a snowfall, in Saint Petersburg, Russia on November 18. Photo: VCG

Online searches for flights to Moscow and Saint Petersburg have surged more than threefold on Chinese travel platform qunar.com as of 9 am on Wednesday, after Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly said that Russia would introduce visa-free travel for Chinese citizens in the very near future, according to data provided by the platform to the Global Times. 

According to the platform's travel index, news of visa-free travel has triggered a massive surge in flight searches to Russia. As of 9 am on Wednesday, Moscow ranked among the top 10 global cities in both total search volume and growth rate on the platform. 

The top 5 Chinese cities searched for flights to Moscow were Beijing, Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, Shanghai, Shenzhen in Guangdong and Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province. 

The number of searches for the Beijing-Moscow route jumped 3.4-fold hour-on-hour on qunar.com, while searches for flights to Moscow departing from Chengdu rose 3.2-fold. Searches for departures from Shanghai increased 1.1-fold hour-on-hour, while those from Shenzhen rose 1.4-fold. Searches for flights from Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, and Southwest China's Chongqing to Moscow also increased over 1 time.

Flight searches for routes from China to Saint Petersburg have also surged on the platform. The fastest-growing origin cities are Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, North China's Tianjin, Urumqi, capital of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

Of these, Wuhan recorded a 14-fold increase in searches compared with the same period last week, while Tianjin and Urumqi rose fivefold and 4.5-fold, relevant data showed. Searches for the route from Shanghai to Saint Petersburg jumped 2 times within one hour and 3 times compared with last week.

Russia has been one of the fastest-growing outbound travel destinations this year, data from qunar.com showed. As of Wednesday, hotel bookings in Russia this year have surged 43 percent compared with the same period in 2024.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia will introduce visa-free travel for Chinese citizens in the very near future, multiple Russian media outlets including Russia Today reported, in move that mirrors China's recent decision to grant the same privilege to Russian nationals.