By Vestnik Kavkaza
Tomorrow the 21st Moscow International Exhibition MITT/Travelling and Tourism will open in the Moscow Expocenter. It is among top-five of leading tourism exhibitions of the world. Annually it gathers companies from 198 countries and regions of the world.
The main event of the exhibition will be the international conference entitled The Travel Business Attacked by Individual Bookings. “The exhibition has always been a mirror of what exists on the market,” its director Sergei Gorsky says. “Individual bookings is not a new trend for the Russian tourism market, but it is growing. Its influence on the market, on the number of players, on the number of travels, and risks for tourists and host countries will be discussed within the business session of MITT.”
According to Gorsky, this year the exhibition “is larger due to foreign participants. The Russian market is still interesting for foreign tour operators. Russia is in the top-five according to sums which are spent by Russian tourists abroad.
New countries are presented at the exhibition – Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Peru, and Island. As for such popular destinations as Spain, many provinces present separate stands. First of all, these are island provinces – Balearic, Canary Islands, the Azores. Many Italian provinces present separate mounts. A united mount of Crimea will take part in the exhibition.”
On Sunday, the day of the Crimean referendum it appeared that businessman Ruslan Baisarov was to invest 12 billion rubles to some Crimean resorts. A resort will include a 500-room hotel complex, a health center for 200 people, SPA-zone, several restraints, a congress hall, an entertainment center, a sea piece for 400 yachts, a water park, and a gold club, ITAR-TASS reports. More than 40 thousand people will have an opportunity to visit the resort annually. The project will create 1 300 jobs.
Marina Rozanova, the Director of Commerce of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia “Profkurort,” told Vestnik Kavkaza: “We expect close attention to resorts, as the Olympics and Paralympics took place. There is clear tourism boom in the world, and our company’s activity confirms it. We predict a 15-20-per-cent growth of the demand for the Caucasian Spa, the Stavropol Krai, and the Altai Krai resorts. People lit up due to Sochi Games. We sell hotel vouchers to 40 resorts of the region. 20 of them are trade-union hotels. We expect no fall. We predict a 10-15-per-cent growth.”
