By Vestnik Kavkaza
The Crimean authorities expect that about 5 million tourists will travel to the peninsula this summer season. Forecasts are based on the tendency of the growth of popularity of spending vacations in Russia, as well as on measures on improvement of transport accessibility to the region. The advisor of the head of Crimea on development of tourism and resorts, Sergei Strelbitsky, says that Russian tourists “won’t notice crossing” the Kerch Strait, heading to Crimea. There are large-scale works on increasing its capacity – for example, an electronic queuing system has already been launched. According to Crimea Media, the infrastructure of the Kerch Ferry is 95% ready for the season. 10 new ferries will begin their operation there on June 1st.
The director of the Caspian Cooperation Institute, Sergey Mikheyev, thinks that “the history of the development of Crimea and its prospects will be political stories for a long time. The Ukrainian mass media writes that there are terrible living standards, no people there, no one is going to visit Crimea. They rejoice that they have blocked the railway service. In their opinion, Crimea is slowly dying: there is no tourism, and there cannot be there. This is not true.”
In fact, according to Mikheyev’s data, “Crimea is developing now. And there are a lot of tourists in Crimea. Therefore, if Ukraine intended to hurt someone, Ukraine hurt itself and only its citizens, who were absorbed in the post-Soviet years and know Crimea as a place of resorts.”
“Tourism has been and still remains one of the main branches of the Crimean economy. The development of post-industrial society in many developed countries leads to a simple thing: spheres of the industry can be transformed, sometimes even lessen. But the spheres of recreation and services are developed on new turns on the level of profitability. As for the level of attractiveness and the prospects, they sometimes become more promising than some of them – the sectors of the economy of the industrial era. The prospects of Crimea are very serious here,” the expert believes.
He thinks that “the level of tourists in Crimea will be quite high in this season. I think it will not be less than five million people. So, it is extremely important to begin to overcome those very obvious problems this year. Many young people in Russia know nothing about Crimea. Now the heritage of Crimea is offered to us again. But historic groundwork means more historical, not tourist interest will run out if we, firstly, won’t start developing it competently and effectively. Secondly, if we won’t complete it with a usual resort factor, the reason why people usually visit resorts: in order to have a rest, swim in the sea, receive appropriate service, improve their health and so on and so forth. It is obvious that we will not hold out with the help of the Crimean Spring only.”
