- Andrey Aleksandrovich, are there any plans to introduce the "all-inclusive" system at resorts in the Caucasus?
- "All inclusive" is a somewhat ordinary term. We do our best to provide tourists with the opportunity to receive a comprehensive service. So that a tourist could not just come to a ski resort, get a ski pass and go skiing, but also create a route, choose excursions, order the necessary ski equipment, and take a walk through the local beauty.
In this regard, taking into account the experience of the world's leading resorts, including European ones, we are now creating a program of integrated tourism services, when tourists are be offered the opportunity to create a certain set of services in a certain unit of time: 5 days, two weeks, as desired. This set will be with different prices and have different categories.
It is very significant for us that during the three summer months, when there is no ski season, as many people visited Elbrus as in winter. This is very important, because it means that there is a demand not only for ski tourism, but also for ecotourism, and for cultural tourism, for gaining new experiences. I think we owe it to tourists to offer it, and such work is underway. I think, this will be done from the next season.
© Photo: Maria Novoselova/"Vestnik Kavkaza"
- What areas of work are planned in North Ossetia?
- This year, together with the government of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, we have done a lot of work and prepared a concept and a master plan for the development of its tourism potential. We looked at all the promising locations that are subject to development and presented our vision of how they should develop, what kind of investors should go there, what should be there, including the construction of hotels or the reconstruction of historical buildings, which need to be restored a little and simply give tourists the opportunity to go there to popularize them.
Now we are getting to the point that we have created a plan for the development of tourist locations in North Ossetia. The famous Mamison and many, many other locations will be included there. Firstly, the plan will solve infrastructure problems, because we understand that over the years, interesting historical places have accumulated quite a lot of problems concerning both land issues and the preservation of monuments. These issues, of course, need to be resolved in order for an investor to come there and feel comfortable, so that he does not have to deal with the problems. He should only create beauty and attract tourists.
© Photo: Maria Novoselova/"Vestnik Kavkaza"
- What are the prospects for the Mamison resort in North Ossetia?
- Mamison is a very promising resort. This is a great place to get to fairly quickly as it is located close to the airport. Beslan is generally beautiful, including the Mamison Gorge, where there are very serious differences in altitude, which is important for ski tourism. There is also a large amount of natural snow on the peaks. Of course, this project has very high potential. Although the resort has not yet been launched, there is already a certain excitement among investors waiting to go there and build, for example, hotels. Our goal is to open the resort by the next ski season.
There is a lot of construction going on in Mamison, and it is not stopping right now. It is clear that on the mountain, due to weather conditions, construction has been suspended for the winter, but in the lower part, directly on the Mamison tourist filed, construction continues. There will be a parking lot, and monolithic work on cable cars is underway. There will be two cable cars, as well as 20 km of slopes and several hotels. The improvement of the resort is a task that we must solve by the end of next year. We should implement this long-awaited project. Everything possible is being done to achieve this.
