Tourism in Arctic: attractive and accessible
ARKHANGELSK: The International Tourists Forum which is held in Arkhangelsk this week want to boost tourism in the Russian part of the Arctic.
For the first time, the Russian Agency of tourism development holds such meeting in the periphery. The main topic of the conference is the development of tourism in the northern territories of Russia and the importance of this agenda is proved by participation of over 400 experts, officials and travel agencies from seven countries and different regions of Russia.
According to the report of the World Tourists Organization the global tourists market experienced sufficient growth in 2010 after a hard period of decline in 2008-2009. Last year the number of international arrivals increased by 7 percent. In Russia the growth was rather moderate – only 3 percent. In the current year the WTO is expecting further positive development estimated in approximately 4-5 percent of growth.
Arctic perspective. Russian challenges
The tourists destination in the Arctic areas are getting more and more attractive for the travellers because they stay among very few exotic places in the world still underexplored by tourists. The experts observe growing competition among the travel agencies from different countries that offer tours to circumpolar territories. Russia obviously is not among the leaders in this race.
The number of travel agencies working with Arctic destinations and tour-products they offer are very small. Also the cost and quality of the tours in the Russian Arctic still do not fit the market demands. The same challenges are observed with other tour products in Russia. The speakers on the conference noted that Russia is still a country badly promoting its tourists attractions on the world market. In most cases a foreign tourist is familiar with such destinations as Moscow and St. Petersburg and to a much less extent the cities of so-called “Golden Ring”, Karelia, Baikal and Kamchatka.
Regional alliances are important
According to Ms. Cordula Wohlmuther, the Deputy regional representative for Europe, UNWTO, the new tour-products should be developed in the regions of Russia.
- It is very important, she said, to develop cooperation among the regions in promoting destinations situated in the adjacent areas, developing joint marketing strategies, planning common transport routes and working out integrated development programs.
A model of such kind of cooperation can be seen in the activity of so-called Vysegrad Four group, the alliance of four European countries: Check republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. The experience of V4 cooperation in development of common tourism strategy was presented on the forum by Zoltan Pap, Chief advisor of the Ministry for National Economy of Hungary.
Some examples of such cooperation among the northern Russian regions have been sounded on the forum. Thus, the travel agencies of Karelia, Vologda and Arkhangelsk regions are working on promoting common tourists projects on the bordering territory.
Opening the Russian Arctic
New possibilities for development of Arctic tourism will probably be opened with newly established national park “Russian Arctic” which covers the northern part of Novaya Zemlya archipelago, Franz- Joseph Land and Victoria islands with almost 1,5 million hectares of territory.
Roman Ershov, director of National Park, said on the conference that “Russian Arctic” is going to use an experience of Svalbard in development of tourists destinations. Svalbard today gets over 60 thousand of tourists only in summer time. Roman Ershov expects that in the beginning the Arctic national park will receive one thousand visitors, but in the future its number should multiply.
- One of the challenges for today, said Ershov, is to open a border-crossing point on the archipelago in order to make it more accessible for foreign tourists. This initiative nevertheless is seriously argued by the Russian Ministry of defense which wants to stop any access of foreigners to the Arctic islands.
Read also: World Tourism Organization head calls on Russia to ease visa rules
The Tourists Forum in Arkhangelsk will continue the whole week. On Wednesday the participants took part in the celebration of 100-years anniversary of oldest Russian wheel-steamer “Nikolai Gogol”, discussed the presentation of new tourist project and tastes the samples of national cousines on the Pomor Ethno Food Festival.
On Friday the guests are going to discuss how to improve the system of training managers for tourism and hospitality and to take part in the opening of International Tourist Fair.
