Today the company Russian Railways started selling ‘all-in’ tickets to Crimea. Transportation of people to the peninsula by train, by car and by sea is restored on April 30th. An 'all-in' ticket provides an opportunity to reach seven cities – Kerch, Simferopol, Sevastopol, Feodosia, Sudak, Yevpatoria and Yalta. It is necessary to buy a combined ticket: by train – by bus – by ferry – by bus. The operator of transportation of passengers is the United Transport Direction (to Port Kavkaz across the Kerch Strait to Yalta, Kerch, Feodosia, Sudak. Simferopol, Yevpatoria, and Sevastopol and back). From April 30th to September 30th 2015, 357.8 thousand people used the 'all-in' ticket to visit Crimea; the index surpasses the similar index of 2014 by 8.3%.
The Crimean authorities promise that by the beginning of the tourist season everything will be ready for welcoming guests.
According to the Ministry of Resorts of Crimea, 2% of tourists from the entire number of guests last year were people from abroad. The Minister of Resorts and Tourism of Crimea, Sergey Strelbitsky, says that foreign journalists are still interested in the development of the Crimean tourist industry; and one of the drivers of development of the sector in 2016 will be establishing of an information space and integration into the world tourist community.
At the same time, Sergey Zheleznyak, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, thinks that Crimea will be an important point of intersection of the foreign and domestic policies implemented in Russia. The MP is sure that those who don’t want Russia to develop successfully will try to play the Crimean card “to restrain our foreign policy successes, our socio-economic development and to deter integration processes in the Eurasian space.”
However, Zheleznyak recalls that “2 million people who were motivated by the idea of belonging to the Russian world for many years, on the other hand, they criticized the current Ukrainian, Crimean and Sevastopol authorities, these people came home to their native harbor, on the one hand, they have a desire to use their own energy to build a fairer, better society, on the other hand, of course, they have fairly high expectations that it will be fast.”
The MP fears that “different aspects of disorder in the economic and social spheres will be drawn by our opponents in an attempt to contain the development of Crimea, Sevastopol and the development of Russia as a whole.”
“When Crimea and Sevastopol reunited with Russia, we realized that the standards of living and the quality of life that was there are quite different from those that are in Russia. Literally, just two figures. Gross regional product per capita in Crimea was more than 3.5 times less, and the amount of investment in fixed capital per capita was 3 times less,” Zheleznyak said, stating that these figures were connected with the fact that “Ukraine invested nothing in Crimea and Sevastopol for 20 plus years.”
Zheleznyak believes that Russia is facing a serious problem: “On the one hand, we need to develop actively the undervalued asset, which in general is on the peninsula in very different industries. On the other hand, significant investments must be made so that Crimea and Sevastopol can become the leading regions for the economic and social development. It's all superimposed on the difficult economic and social situation in the country and in the world, but we must understand that only through investment can we expect revenue and quite serious positive economic results.”
