Tourist destinations of northern France as an object of self-booking in the Russian outbound travel market: the analysis of self-booking practice based on the data obtained from online-services

摘要

This article is devoted to the research of the practice of independent travel to capitals of two regions of Northern France: Rouen (Normandy) and Rennes (Brittany). We studied the material on the Russian and French official tourism websites about tourist flow from Russia to France. We also analyzed reports of independent tourists from Russia about their travels to Rennes and Rouen over a period of two years (from 2015 to 2016) on online accommodation booking websites and on websites of self-planning travel (Booking.com, TripadvisРѕr.ru, Tourister.ru). In the result of content and statistical analysis, we obtained concrete results that let us identify essential trends, differences and similarities of Rennes and Rouen in the context of their popularity among independent tourists from Russia.