Current trends in Russin tourism

CURRENT TRENDS IN RUSSIAN TOURISM  

CURRENT TRENDS IN RUSSIAN TOURISM  

CURRENT TRENDS IN RUSSIAN TOURISM  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CURRENT TRENDS IN RUSSIN TOURISM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012

 

CONTENT

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………..3
2. Current state and trends of tourism in the world…………………………..5
3. Current trends in Russian tourism……………………………………….…8
4. Aims and objectives of tourism development in Russia………………......15
5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………….…..16
6. References…………………………………………………………………17
7. Tabels…………………………………………………………….………..18

 

 

  

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

 

Tourism - is one of the most important sectors of modern economics, and its main aim is satisfying the needs of people and improving the quality of life. Despite, tourism is not leading to the depletion of natural resources, unlike many other industries are. As an export-oriented industry, tourism demonstrates greater stability within an unstable situation on the world markets, compared with other industries.    

          Nowadays, there is the whole strategy in regards of tourism development in Russian Federation. The strategy consists of number of programs, individual projects and extracurricular activities of the organizational, legal, economic, political and diplomatic nature, which provide an effective solution of the problem of tourism development in the country.

The implementation of this strategy is considered to provide the contribution of tourism industry into the solution of the following national objectives of the present stage of economic development in Russia:

-creating conditions for a dynamic and sustainable economic growth;

 -increasing of the level and quality of life by increasing the availability of tourism services, employment and residents’ income;

- increasing of the competitive forth of the Russian economy by making the country more attractive as a tourist destination;

- to ensure balanced socio-economic development of Russia, by increasing the share of tourism in GRP.

From 2002 to 2005 Conception of tourism development was being realized in Russia. It was approved by the Federal Government of Russian Federation on July 11, 2002 № 954-p, and it fulfilled all basic tasks, marked by the action plan.

Current strategy is a logical extension of the Concept of tourism development (2002-2005). It takes into consideration current global trends in tourism and the current stage of development of the Russian tourism industry. Project should be completed in the long term to 2015. Objectives of the strategy should become a basement for the nation-wide understanding of the role of tourism in the economy of the country, as well as determine the direction and level of state support for the tourism industry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. CURRENT STATE AND TRENDS OF TOURISM IN THE WORLD

 

International tourist arrivals grew by 4% in 2011 to 980 million, according to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. With growth expected to continue in 2012, even with a slower rate, international tourist arrivals will be able to reach one billion mark later this year.

 International tourist arrivals grew by 4.4% in 2011 to a total 980 million, up from 939 million in 2010, in a year characterized by a stalled global economic recovery, natural disasters in Japan and major political changes in the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, Europe was the best performer (+6%), while in a sub region range the leader is South-America (+10%). To compare with previous years, developed economies showed higher results (+5.0%) than developing ones (+3.8%), due to the strong results in Europe, and problems in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Despite the challenging conditions international tourism hit new records in 2011,” UNWTO General Secretary, Taleb Rifai said. “These results are encouraging for a sector which is directly responsible for 6% of total exports, 5% of the world’s GDP and employing one out of every 12 people in emerging and advanced economies, especially as they are done at time when we urgently need to stimulate creation and growth of workplaces,” he added.

Despite the unstable economic situation in the world, tourist arrivals to Europe reached 503 million in 201. It is 28 million out of 41 million additional international arrivals recorded worldwide. The best results were demonstrated by Eastern and Central Europe and Southern Mediterranean destinations (+8% each) thanks to tourist flows from such markets as Scandinavia, Germany and Russian Federation.

         In Asia and the Pacific (+6%) the number of tourist arrivals increased up to 11 million in 2011,and total number of international tourists arrivals is 216 million. South Asia and South-East Asia (both +9%) benefited from the strong intraregional demand, while weaker growing was registered in North-East Asia (+4%) and Oceania (+0.3%), mainly because of temporary decline in the Japanese outbound market.

In America (+4%) arrivals increased up to 6 million, and reached 156 million arrivals in total. South America keeps leading positions and for the second year in a row shows 10% of growing. Central America and the Caribbean (both +4%) maintained the growth rates of 2010. North America, with a 3% increase, hit the 100 million tourists mark in 2011.

Africa maintained international arrivals on the 50 million mark, because the two million gain of Sahara destinations (+7%) was offset by losses in North Africa (-12%). The Middle East (-8%) lost an estimated 5 million international tourist arrivals, and had in total 55 million arrivals. Nevertheless, some destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates maintain constant growing.

Available data about incomes and expenditures from international tourism in 2011 matches the positive trend in arrivals. In the 10 top tourist destinations, USA (+12%), Spain (+9%), Hong Kong (China) (+25%) and the UK (+7%) earnings significantly rose. The top spenders were – China (+38%), Russia (+21%), Brazil (+32%) and India (+32%). (Table 1)

According to UNWTO forecast, international tourism will continue to grow in 2012 despite the slower rate. Arrivals are expected to increase by 3% to 4%, and to reach one billion point by the end of the year. Emerging economies: Asia, Pacific and Africa (from 4% to 6%) will regain the lead.  America and Europe (from 2% to 4%) will follow them. Moreover, Middle East (0% to +5%) will start to recover from its losses in 2011.

       All UNWTO experts predict that the tourism sector will perform positively in 2012 despite that development will pass with lower temps than in previous year.

 

 

Nowadays, the most characteristic trends of the world tourism are diversification of the tourist product, searching of new tourist destinations, choice of alternative types of accommodation and transport, as well as the overall price pressures.

There is no doubt, that the rapidly growing low-cost system of air traveling also makes a significant contribution to the stimulation of demand for tourists traveling.

In recent years, the global tourism industry faces the increasing level of competition between the countries on the demand market. Competition is increasing as a result of the following factors:

• the increasing of the number of countries with ambitious plans of attracting tourists;
• over saturation of certain types of tourism offered by the tourist centers and countries (such as beach holiday market);

From the countries which have the aim to maintain its tourist attractiveness, that requires the following steps:

• to try to keep the balance between rising in supply and demand;
• to plan the strategy of tourism development according to the principles of sustainable development;
• to provide long-term investments in the tourism sector;
• to ensure the availability of clear government policies in regards of tourism development;

         During carrying out government policy national tourism administrations in the most of the countries consider the forecast of tourism development in the world, compiled by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). UNWTO is the largest intergovernmental organization, which includes 153 countries. According to UNWTO research “Tourism: 2020 Vision” the increasing in the tourist arriving between 2000 and 2020 will be more than doubled (Table 2). This forecast assumes that by 2020 Russia will take the 9th place in the world according to the number of tourist visits.

 

3. CURRENT TRENDS IN RUSSIAN TOURISM

          

        The analysis of current state of Russian tourism shows that in general this sector is developing quite stable and dynamic in the last years. There is an annual increase in domestic tourist flow. The fast growing demand on tourism services coursed the boom in the process of building of new hotels in the resort regions. What is more, that influenced the creation of national hotel chains and increased the number of hotels of international hotel chains in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other big Russian cities. The amount of foreign and domestic investments into the hotel construction dramatically increased. Despite this, main investments are aimed at the development of hotel business in Russian regions. Especially, we should note the recent year’s successes in the development of tourist complex in Krasnodar region, which basically made Russia the host country for Winter Olympics - 2014. Because of this, whole Krasnodar region became worldwide known and that leads to the long-term business interest for the infrastructure development of this region. What is more, that guarantees that in few years Black sea coast will become world level developed resort center. 

          

         According to statistics, in 2009, the hotel sector income decreased by 18.9%. In 2008 prices, the decline was 10% higher. All in all, in the crisis period decline in revenue of hotels and similar accommodation facilities was 29. In 2010, the hospitality market started to increase again. Increase in revenue was 17.7%, or 12% - excluding inflation.

       The number of workplaces in tourism out of the total employment (including related industries) is 5.7%

       Investment in fixed assets of tourist accommodation in 2011 was 20.1 billion rubles.

       

Russia is full of cultural and natural heritages and other kinds of tourist attractions. According to Rosstat statistics there are 2368 museums in historical cities, 590 theatres, 67 circuses, 24 zoos, almost 9900 historical and cultural monuments and 140 national parks. National parks play an important role in the creating of positive and attractive image of the country. 12 objects of cultural heritage UNESCO out of 15 are parts of national parks.

However, there is a lack of such objects of Russian infrastructure as aqua parks, entertaining centers, skiing resorts, tourist transport and so on.

What is more, that is quite obvious that the tourism potential of the country is far from being fully used. Moreover, the creation of high-quality conditions for tourism activities on the territory of Russian Federation requires more active public policy in the tourism sphere.

Moscow and St. Petersburg take on up to 75% of all international arrivals to the country.  However, number of tourists has been visibly declining in the last 2-3 years due to the sharp rise in prices on services, accommodation and declining of the number of middle class hotels in these cities. For example in Moscow, 9000 of 3* hotels have been recently closed. That lack of places in the middle class hotels has a negative influence on the inbound and domestic tourism development, because that significantly increases the cost of the package of services offered to tourists during their trip to Russia.

Government of Moscow had planned to build 353 new hotels by 2011. However, the strengthening of the Russian currency leads to the situation that the average prices per room in hotels of Moscow with lower comfort and quality of services significantly higher than per the same category room in the European countries. So that becomes very unprofitable for foreign tourists to come to the capital. Such situation may continue for the next 2-3 years.

State of the legal regulations of the tourism industry

In 2006-2007, the Government of the Russian Federation and the Russian Federal Assembly adopted regulations that created country's legal foundations of the modern civilized tourist market. The current tourism activity law almost matches norms and principles of the international and EU laws.

 

The state of the tourism infrastructure

The most significant problems that need attention and serious approach to their solution are underdeveloped tourism infrastructure and bad conditions for the investments into the construction of accommodation and other tourism facilities.  

However, the development of tourism infrastructure cannot be limited only by the creation of new and renovation of existing accommodation. That is also important to construct related infrastructure (transport, catering, entertainment, tourism attractions and others).

           Nowadays, the most popular and perspective types of tourism in the world tourist market are:

• Cultural tourism, which covers 10% of the total international tourist flow and is characterized by a high average rate of tourist expenses;
• Active tourism, such as sports and adventure ones, becomes worldwide popular;
• Specialized tourism, such as eco, scientific, educational, event, health, rural, ski and others;
• Cruise tourism. In 2006 more than 12 million tourists were participating
• in the sea and river cruises.
• Business tourism, the industry which covers so-called MICE (Meetings, Incentive trips, Conferences and Event activities) (Table 3).

 

According to the Russian nature resources, state of tourism infrastructure and availability of the tourism products, all of these types of tourism are quite perspective for development.

For the domestic market it is particularly important to develop beach tourism and health one. Beach tourism is one of the most popular holidays for 38% of Russian tourists. This kind of tourism is being actively developed on Black and Baltic Seas. Azov and Caspian seas also have great opportunities for being summer resorts, but the lack of hotel and other tourism infrastructure become factors which limit successful tourism development in these areas. With appropriate infrastructure, this kind of tourism could be widely distributed in the Primorsky region.

The yacht tourism is only on the first stage of development in Russia, and the number of tourists is less than 0.5% of domestic tourist arrivals. The greatest popularity it has in the Leningrad region and Karelia, but could be developed in all coastal regions.

Analysis of priorities in Russian tourism helps to identify priorities in the development of tourism infrastructure. One of the most actual problems in the further development is the transport component which includes air, railways, water, auto and construction of roads. Here are some quotes from the speeches of President of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin:

• “We really need qualitative breakthrough. Not only have some big projects, but well planned development and a radical upgrade of the whole road network of the country (federal highways, regional, rural and inner city roads.)”
• “Our plan is to double the capacity of the three major Moscow airports in 2020 till 100 million passengers.  The main thing - we need to turn the Moscow Aviation unit (the main aviation unit of Russia) to a modern international air transport complex of the highest level.”
• “There is a great work should be done in order to develop the road network, airports, and railway stations in 13 cities, in connection with FIFA World Cup 2014. And if we will carry out a good development program of the high-speed rail traffic between these cities, or at least among some of them- it will be a powerful breakthrough of the entire infrastructure of the European part of the country.”

 

    In recent years, ski tourism started to develop quite fast, but for the modern qualitative functioning not only hotels but also the engineering and transport infrastructure are necessary as well as water, electricity and gas supply, developed road system, ski lifts and other equipment, data communications, high-quality service, environmentally friendly infrastructure. Currently, there are 150 ski resorts in Russia. The most popular are "Krasnaya Polyana" in the Krasnodar region (260 thousand tourists), "Dombai" in the Karachai-Cherkess Republic (​​195 thousand tourists), "Elbrus" in Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (100 thousand tourists). Ski resorts of Moscow region met more than 320 thousand people in 2009. Considering climatic and landscape features of Russia, ski, as well as other winter sports tourism, have great prospects for development.

 

Promotion of Russia as a tourist destination on domestic and international tourism markets

Until 2002 there was none of non-commercial promotion of Russia as a tourist destination either abroad or inside of the country. The first efforts were made in the mid-1990s., and they were reduced to the visiting of several specialized external and internal. However, the financial support was not enough for the formation of a national exposition.

Since 2002, the range of activities was undertaken in order to show the full tourism potential of the Russian Federation at the international and domestic markets by:

a) starting to represent Russia on the largest international tourism exhibitions.

Nowadays, such representations are held in the major international tourist exhibitions in Finland, Spain, Italy, Germany, China, South Korea, Japan, France, Greece, Poland and Great Britain. Such As part of these exhibitions the following business events are organized: press conferences, presentations of Russian tourism opportunities regions, meetings with heads of foreign national tourism administrations.

The carrying out of International Tourism Exhibition "INTURMARKET" in Moscow (since 2006) became an essential step in the promotion of Russian tourist product within the country and the position of Russia on the world market. This exhibition was included in the schedule of official events of the World Tourism Organization, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) and the Council of CIS member states.

b) making a non-commercial advertising about tourism opportunities in Russia.

Non-commercial advertising is currently carrying with the help of outdoor and mass media advertising in the several European countries: Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Spain, Italy, France, as well as in Japan and China. The scope of this project is limited by financing opportunities.

c)  producing of advertising and branding products.

Advertising products in print and electronic media are being published in large editions in 11 languages of the main markets. They are intended for non-commercial distribution during international tourism exhibitions and formal meetings with the leaders of national tourism organizations, through the Russian Foreign Service mission, the World Tourism Organization and other international organizations.

 

d) holding of international events

       International events stimulate the promotion of Russia as the country of business tourism, which has the appropriate infrastructure, personnel and tourism product. Such events include annual international conferences, seminars and other activities which cover more topical issues of tourism development. Days of Russian Tourism and thematic exhibitions were ones which demonstrated the most effectiveness. 

 

Specialists in the tourism sector

         For a long time, Russia had only one school, where people could learn Hospitality - Moscow Academy of tourism and hospitality business. Today there are more than 300 universities where you can study on this specialty. Students necessarily learn one or two foreign languages in all these universities. However, students who graduate from these schools do not have enough practical skills. They have only a theoretical basis and do not have an idea of how ​ hospitality industry works from inside. That is why, hotel industry employers prefer to hire specialists from the foreign schools. Graduates of these schools are ready to work at any time and don’t need to be taught. As a result, a lot of Russian students go to study in the field of tourism abroad. For example, Swiss schools of management have more than 50% of students from Russia.