The catastrophes with Russian airplanes in Egypt and Turkey, and subsequent restrictions on travel to these countries, have made adjustments to the tourist plans of Russians. Tourists who intend to travel abroad give preference to Asian and European countries, but the difficult economic situation forces many to shift to domestic resorts.
The State Duma deputy from Stavropol Territory, Olga Kazakova, says that Stavropol is working closely with the Ministry for North Caucasus Affairs in the framework of the North Caucasus Federal District development program until 2025, which envisages development of the recreational clusters in Stavropol Territory, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan. "We have very well-developed mountain-ski tourism in Arkhyz, you know this tourist area of ours. We are quite powerfully engaged there, we are developing and are proud of this place. But there is a huge number of problems, including the accessibility of airports, in terms of the availability of pricing," she stated.
She gave Azerbaijan’s Gobaliya resort as an example: "I have been there personally, I know that a sufficiently high level has been created there. And perhaps it is not inferior, and perhaps even exceeds those territories and tourism clusters that receive our traditional tourists going to Europe or to other regions. So here, I think, the first problem is affordability. The cultural point here, on the contrary, is quite comfortable, because everywhere people speak in their own language, we are understood everywhere. There is a high level of service. This is what I have seen in Gobaliya. If we talk about our Russian, North Caucasus resorts, then, of course, we have a problem of personnel training. We are working on this issue. We should not hide this; on the contrary, we should talk about it and develop it. We work with institutions, with academies, with colleges, which can train representatives of those professions involved in the tourism cluster. This is also quite an important topic, because comfort is created this way. People come and want to see the attitude, and this attitude influences further decision-making, whether a person will come again, whether he will come back to this resort or choose another."
Kazakova believes that the personal impressions of tourists are in second place after pricing policy in a resorts appeal: "What traditions he will see, what he will hear there, what emotions he will experience, this is probably one of the most important issues after the pricing policy. Therefore, I see that we have problems with this, but there is government support in this part, state support is present. There is still a need to involve our human resources, and all together we do this and move towards the stated objectives we have, to make our resorts worthy, of a high class and meeting the needs of all the tourists, whether they are amateurs, if we talk about skiing, or professionals who are interested in some more or less high aspects of some sports destinations."
