Russia and Japan held a conference on tourism

Conference on Tourism with participation of representatives of Russia and Japan was held at the Federal Agency for Tourism. At the conference, Russia was presented by the deputy head of Rostourism Alexander Radkov, Japan – by Assistant of the Head of the Japan Tourism Agency Masaaki Kai.

A large number of visitors from Japan, about half of whom are tourists, annually visits Russia. In 2008, according to the statistics over 86 thousand Japanese people, 44 thousand of whom came as tourists, visited the country. In 2009, these figures decreased significantly – 74 thousand and 39 thousand respectively. This decline, which is characteristic for the tourism industry throughout the world, was due mostly to the economic crisis. Experts hope that Russia will quickly return to the previous level or even increase it.

First of all, at the conference questions of mutual awareness of tourism opportunities were discussed.

In particular, Mr Kay stressed the importance of the Russian market for Japanese tourism and said that the Russian advertising budget of the Japan Tourism Agency was this year increased in three times. Japan has been doing the main count on the medical and culinary tourism.

Mr. Radkov reminded that information about Russia and its capacity is virtually absent in Japan. And told about the possible creation of a site about Russia, which will work, in particular, in Japanese. Perhaps the site will really partially fill the lack of information about the country and will attract more foreigners to Russia.

“We also have a plan for creating multilingual Web portal about Russia, which will work also in Japanese”, – emphasized A. Radkov.

The parties agreed that the potential of the Russian-Japanese tourism is very big. And, unfortunately, virtually untapped to date.

Also the question about the difficulties of flights between the two countries was raised. The representative of the Japanese airlines said that due to the monopolization of the market of air transportation from Japan to the Far East is impossible to make them cheaper.

Japan Airlines suggests entering the air transportation market in this region, which will simplify and cheapen them.

The participants discussed once again the agreement on simplifying the visa regime between the countries. In this connection, Alexander Radkov suggested a possible agreement on which entry to the country in tourist groups will be visa-free.

This Russian-Japanese conference was the third. The first meeting took place in 2005 during the visit of Vladimir Putin to Japan. Then the program was signed to strengthen cooperation in tourism.