Combining an event with communication

A Russian-Belarusian Congress will be held in Minsk on April 13-15, a panel discussion “Event Tourism and National Tourism Awards: Prospects for Mutual Integration” will be held. EcoTourism Expert spoke with Gennady Shatalov, an expert in event tourism, about why this integration is necessary, and asked if there are any problems in the event tourism today?

- What is the situation with the event tourism now? Are there enough events?

- I will give a short answer: more than enough, there are actually very many of events.

- So, the next question: are there any problems with the organization of such events? What is the situation with hotels, transportation, hotel room rates and other prices, and so on?

- Many problems! I will mention, for example, the transport. In part, you have already mentioned these very basic problems in your question.

In some cases, getting to one or another place of a tourism “event” is a serious problem. For example, the railway line of the Gorky Railway Department goes to the city of Yoshkar-Ola, the capital of the Republic of Marij El. And the railway branch from Moscow to Samara belongs to the Kuibyshev Railway Department. Two different Railway departments, and the result is that there is no direct railway connection between major cities of the same Federal District. And this is just one such example!

By the way, this is one of the reasons why at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, the project “Bright Weekends in the Volga Area” was launched, within the framework of which tourist trains connected the cities of the Volga Federal District. On the last weekend of March, for example, tourists from Samara took such a train to Kirov, but there is no direct, “standard” railway connection between these cities.

On April 1, the Tulip Festival started in the Republic of Kalmykia, and the problem is that there are no trains to this republic. The tourist train to Elista could save the situation. I am sure that new routes will also be launched, and the Russian Railways company assumes that if the way is not very long, separate “tourist trains” will be launched.

 - The festival attracts a lot of tourists, are there any problems with their accommodation?

- There are problems, this issue is becoming more serious as the activity of many festivals grows. For example, the city of Mariinsk in the north of Kuzbass (Kuznetsk Coal Basin), where the Day of the Siberian Merchants is held, can no longer cope with the tourist flow, we have to use many tourist camps.

In March, there was a strategically important session in Birsk, Bashkortostan, where we discussed the launch of a new festival and the calendar of events for the summer period. The owners of hotels, holiday camps and glampings were also present and told us that for the summer season, many tourist accommodations are sold out and booked.

- Why is the integration of this type of tourism and national tourism awards projects necessary?

- I can give a simple example: a tourist souvenir. The Russian Railways company, for example, will make specific souvenirs for a specific tourist train and route to be offered in its trains. Not the standard souvenirs offered now everywhere, but specific and authentic ones.

The prize and the competition are related to the fact that the participants can see other examples. They communicate and socialise. The most important thing is not “prize-giving”, as they say, but real intercommunication, exchange of experience, which often results in new projects and improvement of the existing ones.

It is important to see the idea, but on the other hand, it is important not to copy what others do, but to learn from each other.

I will give another example: there is a wonderful folk-show “Sadko” in Veliky Novgorod. And the same show will be held in Voronezh, of course, not quite in the same format, but it will be held, and local specifics and regional authenticity will be taken into account. There is a festival dedicated to cherries in the Tambov Region. For the second year in a row, representatives of a similar festival from Belarus come to them - to the Glubokoe village. And they met in one of the tourist awards projects.

We plan to further strengthen this integration. Especially if we talk, for example, about the Russian-Belarusian relations in today’s geopolitical conditions with closed or semi-closed borders.

- In Minsk, you will discuss the issues in the context of the Russian-Belarusian relations. Is there an understanding what the situation is with this in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS countries)? Or in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU countries)?

- The next story of our development is connected with Uzbekistan. We are actively working on it, and I hope that soon, either our Uzbek colleagues will come to us, or I will go there to discuss and coordinate our event calendars.

There are other destinations as well. Thus, the Republic of Buryatia is building very good relations with the Mongolia’s tourism industry today. And we want to expand the geography in this tourism segment, because there are also many interesting tourism events in this country.

I hope to visit Blagoveshchensk in August, and China is across the Amur River, the two countries are connected with the bridge. One can see a China’s city with the ‘naked eye’, as they say. I believe that in this region, we will be able to develop the cooperation in event tourism.

We will use the experience gained in our cooperation with Belarus and Uzbekistan to develop our relations with Kazakhstan. It is necessary to establish relationships, especially, taking into account that my Kazakh partners and colleagues in event tourism have good experience in certain routes. And through the Russian Union of Travel Industry, we plan to create the first points of attraction this year, so that in the future, we would be able to jointly create a large joint calendar of events that would include, for example, national holidays.