Are cheap holidays on offer because Russians can’t travel outside their country?

Proper package holidays in the middle of August for in the low £300s per person? The giant tour operator Tui is putting plenty of good deals into the market for the next couple of weeks, such as a departure on Tuesday 13 August from Newcastle to Zante for £309.

Nothing is so perishable as a plane seat that departs empty and a hotel room that remains unoccupied. Holiday companies, with commitments of aircraft and accommodation, can cut prices for late sales to whatever is needed to fill the booking void.

But I have been reading speculation online that the reason so many cheap deals are available is because Russians cannot travel outside their country. Without these often high-spending customers, the argument goes, hotels are reducing rates.

Having looked at the evidence: there are plenty of cheap holidays around this August, unusually. And there are restrictions on where organised trips from Russia can go, as well as some red tape for individual Russian travellers. But in this case, correlation is certainly not causation.

Sure, some five-star hotels in cities such as Nice, Monaco and Venice will be missing their usual complements of high-spending Russian guests. In Turkey and Cyprus, too, some hoteliers may have offered improved rates to UK holiday companies to fill otherwise empty rooms. These countries were very popular with both Russians and Ukrainians before Vladimir Putin decided to invade his neighbour, and demand has dwindled from the countries currently at war.

Yet I am also seeing good value in places such as Benidorm and Lanzarote, which were not visited by significant numbers of tourists from Russia and Ukraine before the conflict began.

The availability of cheap holidays across southern Europe, from Cyprus to the Canaries, is mainly due to a slump in demand and an excess of supply. Since the end of the pandemic, holiday prices have soared. Tempted by big profit margins, companies have piled on capacity. But growing unwillingness by the travelling public to pay outlandish prices, combined with pressure on household budgets, means buyers need to be lured by cheaper deals.

Turning to Russian tourists: many people in the West believe they have been unable to travel beyond their borders since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That is simply not true. Russian airlines are banned from most of Europe (and vice-versa). But there are plenty of destinations where Russians are definitely welcome.

I took a snapshot of a day’s arrivals at a key Mediterranean sunspot: Antalya in Turkey, gateway for the Turkish Riviera. During the first eight hours of Wednesday morning, there were more than 40 arrivals from Russia. Sixteen of them were from Moscow and five from St Petersburg. But there were a further three planes from each of Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan and Ufa, and single arrivals from eight other cities.

For comparison, six planes touched down from the UK and 31 from Germany (with Cologne by far the largest source). On these figures and within that time frame, Russia is sending more holidaymakers to this part of the Mediterranean than the two biggest outbound markets in Western Europe combined.

Dubai is also very popular with Russians, with three arrivals from Moscow and others from Yekaterinburg and St Petersburg in the first eight hours of Wednesday. And while British travellers cannot currently fly nonstop to Phuket in Thailand, Russians can choose from departures from Moscow, St Petersburg and Irkutsk in Siberia to the Thai island.

So, for Russians who have not been dispatched by Putin to fight his brutal war on the deadly front line in Ukraine, there are plenty of holiday options.

Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.