The Federal Tourism Agency has selected projects aimed at the promotion of the tourism opportunities of Russia. "We received about 400 applications from various regions of the Russian Federation, carried out a competitive selection, and supported the one we considered the most attractive, covering all kinds of tourism to some extent, because Russia is a unique country with the whole palette of possibilities in terms of tourism," says Alexander Radkov, head of the Federal Tourism Agency. "They include beach tourism and eco-tourism, cultural, educational, and active tourism."
As for the North Caucasus republics, for Dagestan, in Mr Radkov's opinion, it is vital to develop the Caspian Sea. "In Russia we don't have that many sea coasts adapted for beach tourism. Well, there is the Black Sea. But the potential of the Caspian Sea is enormous. Many Caspian countries have already worked a lot in this direction, like, for instance, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran. And we are talking about the development of both beach tourism and cruise tourism. Because it is very important to develop cruise routes on the Caspian Sea. It would be extremely important and popular."
Mr Radkov believes that Chechnya is also "doing a lot, like construction of ski resorts, various balneological spas for health and active tourism".
"The same goes for Ingushetia," the head of the Federal Tourism Agency says, "it has huge potential, beautiful nature. This year we are planning to hold another tourist movie festival in Ingushetia, we have already reached an agreement with the government of the republic that we will use their site to emonstrate the best that has been done recently in terms of promoting tourism, using the tools of cinematography".
At the same time, Mr Radkov mentioned that "there are things related to security, to the image. The issue is quite complex, so it is a real challenge. But tourism in this regard, of course, can do a lot to promote the North Caucasus resorts in Russia and abroad, forming a positive image of it."
Stavropol Territory, of course, is first of all the resorts of the Caucasian Mineral Waters, the spa complex. One of the major tasks is the integration of the sanatorium complexes into business. Now there are fewer forms of government support for spa complexes, and they need to be reorganized quite quickly and hurry to build new relations with business. Therefore, the sanatorium- resort complex should be developed - Russia's balneologia is the best in the world, and, of course, we shouldn't pass over this advantage," Mr Radkov says.
