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Success Of Hit Show Chernobyl Boosts Tourism By 40 Per Cent

Success Of Hit Show Chernobyl Boosts Tourism By 40 Per Cent

The HBO/Sky Original miniseries about the Chernobyl power plant ran over five episodes

Rebecca Shepherd

Rebecca Shepherd

If you've so far dodged the hype surrounding HBO/Sky Original miniseries Chernobyl then this is sure to make you tune in once and for all.

People are spending their hard-earned cash to visit the area where the nuclear disaster took place back in 1986 following on from the interest that came off the back of the programme.

So much so that, according to Reuters, tourism to Chernobyl has spiked by 40 per cent, with people wanting to see the plant and the abandoned town it's situated in with their own eyes.

On 25 April back in 1986, the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a catastrophic reaction. From that moment on, time has stood still in that small part of what is now Ukraine.

There has always been a fascination with the area which has been boosted thanks to the five-episode miniseries which took off recently.

Companies offer tours of the area which are filled up by intrepid explorers looking to capture a glimpse into the Soviet era, as well as to see the aftermath of a tragedy that claimed many lives and left a 2,600km area uninhabitable.

Sergiy Ivanchuk, director of SoloEast tours, told Reuters the company saw a 30 per cent rise in tourism to the area in May 2019 compared with the same month last year.

He added how bookings for June, July and August have risen by approximately 40 per cent since HBO aired the show.

Tours have become of huge interest to viewers of Chernobyl.
CHERNOBYLwel.come

We spoke to Martin Duben, one of the people behind CHERNOBYLwel.com, one of the tour operators taking anyone willing into the exclusion zone.

With numbers on the rise, he said: "It depends what time of the year you go, the spring and autumn are crowded - in April, May, September and October there are thousands of visitors per weekend.

"The ghost town of Pripyat is not a ghost town at all, you have a hard time trying to take a picture where there is no-one there. There's too many tourists.

A picture from one of the tours.
CHERNOBYLwel.come

"November is the best time, it's not that cold but there is some snow and it is kind of depressing.

"Everyone is saying 'why do you want to go to Chernobyl' but then they get there and there are hundreds if not thousands of people there."

We'll take your word for it, mate.

Featured Image Credit: Sky/HBO

Topics: Entertainment, TV and Film, Chernobyl