By Vestnik Kavkaza
Since the beginning of the year Russian tourist operators have been pointing out a decrease in demand for foreign resorts among Russian tourists. In comparison with last year, the tourist flow from Russia decreased not only to the European countries and remote destinations, such as Mexico, but also to Turkey, which had always been thought to be one of the less expensive and most qualitative tourist destinations. Many experts believe that the reason for this is an increase in demand for internal resorts. Finally, this year – in Krasnodar Territory and Crimea - a package tourist product appeared in Russia.
According to the Head of the Federal Tourism Agency, Oleg Safonov, the largest Russian tour operators, which used to sell only outbound tours, can be used for domestic tourism.“
Oleg Safonov, Head of the Federal Agency for Tourism: “This is one of the most important features of the 2015 tourist season. But Rosturizm has the very important task of distributing the practice of creating packages of tourist products on the territory of our country. We believe that the Far Eastern regions are very promising directions. We have to think about creating a package of tourist products in our capitals: Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other large cities. I think this is the second task that we will have to solve, together with representatives of the tourism business of the Russian Federation,” Sergey Safonov is sure.
He also says that the Agency is actively working on the RussiaTravel national tourism portal. The first stage is filling the content. It is planned to be completed by the 15th of July of this year. And we believe that in December 2015 the national tourism portal will be launched, not only in Russian, but even in English and Chinese.
Speaking about the development of Crimea’s resorts, Safonov reminded that 4.1 million Russian tourists visited Crimea last year: “This year, we hope that the number of visitors to Crimea will be more – about 5 million people. There are all the prerequisites. Firstly, as you know, the capacity of the ferry has been increased. This year we specifically visited it in April and saw how the Kerch ferry works there. And then we noted that it will transport 10,000 vehicles, 50 thousand people a day. Actually, these plans have already been implemented. The capacity of the ferry has been significantly increased. In addition, the airport at Simferopol has been modernized. Indeed, it has already been reported in the media when we introduced new terminals.The capacity of the airport has been significantly increased, too. And if we speak about cities from which planes fly to Crimea, this figure is also known. From 50 cities of our country. And we see that interest in Crimea is very large,” the head of Rosturism says.
As for the North Caucasus resorts, Safonov thinks that the region has huge potential that needs to be developed, especially the potential for mountain skiing: “We see huge prospects in Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia. We just need to work on this, it is necessary to implement various projects in the framework of the federal target program. And this year, I would like to say that we are planning to finance a number of activities directed at opening new resorts, including the Caucasian republics. Projects are being implemented in particular in the Republic of Dagestan and Adygea. You know that very interesting projects have been realized in Chechnya. The prospects are extremely large. We just need to work on this.”
