Der Rostourismus hat den zweiten Teil des Jahres 2009 ausgeglichen

On the conference this week in the medium center “Izvestya” the head of the Rostourism Anatoly Yarotchkin balanced the summer tourist season.

In general the pessimistic mood of the beginning of the season didn’t justify. The rate of the entry tourism and departure tourism fell, but not as hard as one expected.

According to Mr. Yarotchkin the entry stream of tourists in Russia fell by 15% during the first semester 2009 – it means that a little less than 753 thousand tourists visited Russia during half a year. It’s 20% less than in 2008.

The number of tourists from neighbor countries – Lithuania and Latvia felt nearly by a half, Norway – by a quarter, in Germany – by 12%. From the USA, Netherlands, Greece, Canada and some other countries the stream of tourists felt by 8% – 14%.

On the other part the measures that had been taken were not in vain. With the cancelation of visas the tourist stream from Israel considerably increased. It was 20.5% more tourist this year.

Excellent results show Austria, with the beginning of the budget trip Vienne – Moscow of the air company Air Berlin the number of tourist from this country grew by 35%.

The other surprise was Spain – increase of tourist is 16%. This result became possible because of the large advertisement activity of Russia in Spain. There were 2 conferences for Spanish tour companies and now the theater Bolshoi is on tour there.

Many experts name the scanty promotion of the Russian tourism in the West as one of the most important in this sphere. According to Anatoly Yarotchkin the financial support of the advertisement of Russian tourism are nearly the same as in Czech Republic while the territory of Russia is several times bigger.

The insufficient advertisement is not the only problem of the tourism in Russia. Many foreigners are afraid of the manifestation of the xenophobia and the race impatience, high prices and insufficient development of the infrastructure. All this fears are intensified by the financial crisis and the development of the grippe A/H1N1 and make the tourist indexes smaller.

Among the measures planned for resolution of today’s problems Anatoly Yarotchkin named the promotion of the Russian tourism – in particular, opening of the Russian offices all over the world and financial ensuring of the work of tourist agencies.