Bashkiria interests no more than 40% of potential tourists - VCIOM

UFA, 5 February 2020. /Bashinform News Agency, Rozalia Valeeva/ translated by Tatiana Aksyutina/.

In 2019, Russians made 45 million trips domestically. The total number of tourist trips amounted to 60 million, including inbound tourism from China, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Such data are cited in a joint report by VCIOM and the Center for Regional Policy Development.

Moreover, the number of tourist trips from Russia is about 24 million. Mostly compatriots traveled to Turkey, Abkhazia, and Finland. However, tourists vacationing there can, under certain conditions, reorient to have rest in Russia already in 2020-2021.

About half of Russians (45%) travel at least once a year, most of them in Russia. Also, among those who prefer to travel abroad, the majority (81%) expressed a desire to make tourist trips around our country under comparable conditions. In general, more than half of Russians (56%) hold this opinion.

As it turned out, the Russians are not sufficiently informed about the possibilities of tourist trips around the country. According to the Federal Tourism Agency, only Moscow and the Moscow Region, Krasnodar Territory, St. Petersburg, and Crimea have indicators that go beyond 10 million tourists a year. For other territories with undoubted tourism potential (for example, Altai, Kamchatka, Karelia) this indicator sometimes does not exceed 2 million people. This situation can be caused by various factors - from the lack of financial investments and the scarcity of infrastructure to the socio-demographic features of different categories of tourists.

Among the regions that went on vacation over the past five years, respondents named Krasnodar Territory, Crimea, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Stavropol Territory, and Khakassia.

Researchers identify the most promising regions where the influx of tourists could be ensured shortly: these are Volgograd, Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Territory, Astrakhan, and Tyva. The remaining regions are currently interested in less than 50% of potential tourists, experts say.

Bashkiria, Arkhangelsk Region, Kalmykia, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Perm Territory, Yakutia, Mari El, Voronezh, and Murmansk Regions, Magadan should work towards increasing its tourist attractiveness - provided that they have a good reserve of 30-40%, the report says.

One of the tools to popularize domestic tourism should be an increase in quality information in the media and social media, experts say. According to the authors of the report, event tourism partially solves this problem (for example, festivals like Alfa Future in Nizhny Novgorod, “Perm Period”, “Archstoyanie” in Kaluga region, “Nashestvie” in Tver region, “Volcano Day” in Kamchatka, Industrial Biennale in the Urals, etc.).

Cultural publicity is also needed - the creation of cultural points, art centers in the regions, holding of exhibitions and international cultural and educational projects, gastro-festivals, etc.

Tourism stimulates the development of related sectors of the economy, such as transport, trade, crafts, construction, etc. The share of tourism in the national income of Germany exceeds 5%, France - 10%, Italy - almost 20%. In our country, this share is still fluctuating at the level of 2-3%.