World Tourism Organization head calls on Russia to ease visa rules
The Russian government should review its strict visa policies and take more efforts to make travelling in Russia easier in order to attract more tourists, the head of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) said.
- Every country in the world has ability to adjust its procedures and regulations to encourage more visitors, UNWTO head Taleb Rifai said to RIA Novosti. - Russia needs to make visiting easier.
According to Rafai Russia has become a major tourism player in the world in course of the five to seven last years. Last year the outbound market grew about 26 percent and over 40 million Russians traveled.
In order to make it easier for tourists to come to Russia, the country’s government should act on two levels, Rifai believes: - one is a level of visas, and the other is a level of airlines, Rafai said, adding that in his opinion, the first issue was more important than the second.
Rafai also called on Russian airlines to increase the number of flights to Russian cities other than Moscow and St. Petersburg and to lower flight prices. He suggested that a lack of high-level touristic services and Russia’s underdeveloped infrastructure was a problem, but not a major obstacle for travelling in the country.
Also the Russian Border Guard Service supports the idea of introducing a visa free travel regime for foreign citizens to increase the number of tourists to Russia. As BarentsObserver reported, First Deputy Commander of the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) Border Guard Service Colonel General Vyacheslav Dorokhin believes that scrapping visas will help increase the number of those wishing to visit the country.
Russia has visa-free travel agreements with almost all former Soviet republics and with more than 20 other countries.
The Russian authorities have long been trying to persuade Europe to drop visas for Russian citizens. Progress was made on the visa issue in the EU-Russia Summit in December last year. After major pressure from Russia, the EU side agreed to initiate a progress plan, which eventually will lead to the introduction of a visa-free regime between the sides.
Several key EU leaders at the same time underline that the visa-free regime will not be introduced in the near future, that it is only a “long-term objective”. Other EU country representatives, among them Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, maintain that the visa regime could be abolished already in few years.
