Russia’s outbound tourism fell to an 18-year record low in 2015, as a combination of terrorist attacks, political punch-ups, and a collapsing rouble persuaded most holiday makers to stay at home.

Outbound tourism was down 31.3 percent year-on-year, the worst fall since the 1998 crisis, according to Irina Turina of Russia’s Travel Industry Union (“RCT”). The previous year was the most difficult for Russian tourist agencies since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and scores of companies have gone out of business.

Russians made a total of 12,107,000 tourist trips abroad in 2015, according to the RCT. The last time tourism fell so much was during the 1998 crisis when the rouble lost three quarters of its value against the dollar. Outbound trips that year fell by a quarter (24.4 percent).

Outbound tourism was already declining on the back of the steady weakening of the rouble before its dramatic collapse in December 2014. Outbound trips fell four percent in 2014, 15 percent in 2009, 6.5 percent in 2001, and 15.6 percent in 1999.

Earlier, Rosstat reported that the total number of trips abroad by Russians was down by almost 20 percent to 36.8 million trips in 2015.

The closure of the Turkish and the Egyptian tourism markets to Russian travelers, the two most popular destinations, have had the biggest impact.

Russians cancelled trips to Egypt en masse after terrorists linked to the Islamic State blew up a plane on its way back to Russia on October 31, 2015. President Vladimir Putin vowed retribution for the terrorists who planted the bomb that killed over 200 people, almost all Russians. Holiday travel from Russia to Egypt fell by 28 percent in 2015, according to the RCT.

Egypt’s tourism revenue has declined by roughly USD1.3 billion since the plane crash on the Sinai Peninsula last year, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said in a televised interview in early March 2016.

Trips to Turkey, which used to be an even more popular destination than Egypt, with some three million Russian visitors per year, also dwindled after the Russian government “recommended” that tourist agents cancel all trips to that country.

The move was in retaliation for Turkey’s decision to shoot down a Russian bomber that invaded Turkey’s airspace on the Syrian border for a total of 17 seconds. The Kremlin was incensed by the incident and has imposed a raft of economic sanctions in retaliation, including restrictive measures aimed at curtailing Turkey’s revenue from Russian tourists. The raw cost of these restrictions for Turkey’s economy is estimated at USD3 billion for 2015 and USD8.3 billion for 2016, according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet.

Russian visitors to Turkey have been rising steadily from 2.9 million in 2008 to a peak of 4.5 million in 2014, when Russians constituted 12.5 percent of all Turkey’s foreign holiday-makers. These numbers dropped off sharply in 2015, with only 3.6 million tourists, which reflects an 18.5-percent decrease year-on-year, according to Hurriyet.

Russia’s share in Turkey’s annual tourism revenues made up a steady six percent of the total between 2003 and 2008. After the 2008 crisis, it rose to 8.6 percent by 2014. However, since Russians have shunned Turkey, tourism revenues originating from Russia are down an estimated 33 percent, Hurriyet reports.

Other more exotic destinations, while attracting fewer tourists, have been even harder hit, mainly as the currency devaluation has made them a lot more expensive to visit. Among the countries most affected by the fall of the Russian tourist traffic are Indonesia (decrease of 96.6 percent), Tunisia (decrease of 83 percent), the Dominican Republic (decline of 82.5 percent), Mexico (decline of 66.5 percent), Morocco (reduction of 64 percent), Hong Kong (reduction of 46 percent), Thailand (down 46 percent), China (down 45.5 percent), India (minus 43.7 percent), the Maldives (minus 43.7 percent), and Cuba (less 43 percent). Of the European countries, Greece showed the greatest decrease of 48 percent, falling from the third to the fifth place in the top 10 favorite destinations.

Amongst the countries least affected was Vietnam, which lost only five percent of its traffic, and Montenegro, which lost only seven percent of the Russian tourist flow, probably as it is one of the few countries on the Mediterranean coast that doesn’t require Russians to get visas.