“The Chinese source market is growing really fast, nobody really expected it and it is growing at a tremendous rate,” said Alexander Sosnin, Infoflot chairman, in an exclusive interview in the 2020 European River Cruise Market Report by Cruise Industry News.

The main source market is Russia. However, international business is growing, led by the Chinese and North American markets.

“After 2014, we had few American guests because of the political situation, but the American market is growing again,” Sosnin said.

Despite that, all the opportunity seems to be centered on robust growth coming out of China, which Sosnin said nothing could compare to.

Sosnin, fresh off a trip to Siberia when interviewed, said that he was dealing with lots of charter requests. For Chinese clients he said they prefer to charter out the entire ship for weeks at a time.

Infoflot owns eight riverboats, operating in Russia. Seven of Infoflot’s ships are sold to individual clients, groups, agents and charterers by the company, while the eighth operates under the Sun City brand, offering a more basic cruise product.

The most popular offerings are the Two Capitals cruises between Moscow and St. Petersburg. 

Infoflot cruises are sold as four-star products.

While most of the company’s ships sail the Volga there are also sailings on the great rivers of Siberia, the Lena, Irtysh, Ob and Yenisei.

About the 2020 European Cruise River Market Report 

The new European Cruise Market Report provides a comprehensive look at the river cruise business with capacity metrics by river and brand, company profiles and much more. 100+ pages of insights. Learn more.