Ecological tourism in Russia is in demand mainly among wealthy tourists from abroad. However, it is necessary to attract foreign tourists from the middle class, said Sergei Ivanov, special representative of the President of the Russian Federation on environmental issues, ecology and transport during a press conference in Moscow today.
«First of all, in my opinion, you should focus on Russian tourists. But you should not neglect the possibility of exporting services and there are lots of examples. Millions of tourists visit Lake Baikal. About 50% of Russians and 50% are foreign tourists, many come from China and Mongolia: foreigners travel, they are ready to spend money on it, but we must do everything to attract middle-class tourists from Western and Eastern countries (Japan, South Korea, China). Such tourism is one of the elements, in my opinion, called soft power,» said Ivanov.
According to him, Russia is working on a survey on the introduction of a visa-free regime for many countries.
“We introduced electronic visas that help attract foreigners who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to, for example, live in a tent in Kamchatka,” he explained. He added that the introduction of an electronic visa in the Kaliningrad region and the Far East has enormous potential.
Ivanov recalled that the share of ecotourism is 25% in global tourism. According to him, per day the income from ecotourism is 1 billion US dollars. Thus, it brings a minimum of $ 4 billion per day.
«We are taking serious steps to ensure a visa-free regime for many countries.»
At the same time, Putin’s special envoy announced the “extremely weak” development of domestic tourism in Russia. For domestic tourism to flourish, it will take years of systematic work, while its potential is “huge”, Ivanov noted.
“Russia has amazingly beautiful places ... But there is a huge problem: in order for people to go there, you need infrastructure: small airports ... with a dirt strip near the national park or a specially protected natural area where planes with a maximum of 20 seats land. We need hotels, but not concrete boxes - rather small houses adapted to the local nature and located either on the border with the national park or the specially protected natural area, or near it,” said the presidential special representative.
Ivanov expressed the opinion that the development of tourist infrastructure in such areas should be mainly small and medium-sized businesses, “a real small and medium-sized business, and not this — I will return to Baikal - which in the southern part of the lake built a huge number of hotel-cells without any treatment facilities, and all waste products flow into Baikal."
He recalled that the total territory of all specially protected natural areas and national parks in Russia is the first in the world - 13.9% of the country's territory. Moreover, according to recent estimates, only 12% of Russian citizens visited them, he added.
