Ilya Umansky
President of the Russian Union of Travel Industry
The deadline for adopting amendments to the current - ‘old’ - law on tourism has been extended until November 18, 2024. EcoTourism EXPERT spoke with Ilya Umansky, President of the Russian Union of Travel Industry, about the expectations of the tourism industry related to adopting this law on tourism.
- First of all, why does the tourism industry need new amendments to the current law on tourism that is in force?
- The current law on tourism, of course, was elaborated for a completely different tourism market situation, for different basic principles and using different approaches to developing the tourism. In 1996, the outbound tourism was the main segment. By and large, the effective law on tourism was intended to regulate this particular segment of the tourism industry.
Over the years, all sorts of ‘fine-tuning’ and amendments have been added to the law on tourism. And at the moment, the law on tourism needs to be amended taking into account the rapidly changing tourism market.
This is one of the reasons why the proposal was made to elaborate a new law on tourism that will have a different character, and a different approach is expected to be used while elaborating it. It is assumed that the new law on tourism should be a framework to define the main definitions of tourism, as well as its concepts and structure. And later on, it will be improved with the help of regulatory by-laws.
By November 18, the date of the second reading at the State Duma, the required amendments should be made, as I said, to the ‘old’ law. The new law on tourism is currently being elaborated and will be discussed.
- The explanatory note informs that new definitions are intended to provide a wider range of possibilities for formulations in the state programs on the development of tourism. Therefore, we should expect an increase in funding the tourism industry following the adoption of the document, shouldn’t we?
- Of course, the booming tourism and hospitality industry needs funding. Taking into account the tasks being implemented currently to develop hotel infrastructure (and this is now a key task, a meta-goal, the existing hotel infrastructure needs to be improved and increased because there is a desperate shortage of hotel facilities in the tourism and hospitality industry), all kinds of support measures are certainly required, new approaches to financing and subsidizing by the state are needed.
In general, certain solutions are currently being implemented to solve the existing problems.
- What are the examples of solutions being implemented?
- One of the effective measures is resolution No.141, under which the interest rate on loans for investors implementing investment projects in the tourism sector was subsidized.
Another question is how the current proposals aimed at changing the conceptual notions of the current law are interconnected, and how all this is connected with the measures aimed at providing support and subsidies?
- Actually, there is no direct connection…
- Indeed, hardly any direct connection is seen. There exists some connection, of course, but now the talk is not about the fact that the sole absence of clearly defined concepts reduces the possibility of financing tourism projects. Rather, legislators simply have to start off from the very beginning - ‘from scratch’. To be able to give any explanations, first of all, the basic conceptual notions should be defined.
- What are the examples of the basic conceptual notions?
- I know for sure that the core issue has been discussed - about giving a clear definition of a ‘tourism service’. This is one of the most basic elements. There exists a definition of a ‘tourism product’ that consists of a set of ‘tourism services’, but it is not very clear what a ‘tourism service’ is.
It is necessary to put this in order and work out definitions, because in the future, it is precisely this concepts that will be the basis for all standard-setting and creating the regulatory acts that should be harmoniously interconnected and have no ambiguous interpretations.
- And what about financing?
- Sangadzhi Tarbaev, head of the State Duma Committee on Tourism and Development of Tourism Infrastructure, who proposes these definitions is absolutely right, in my opinion. This is the right two-step approach. At first, the definitions are expected to ‘pass the filter’ now and appear in the current law on tourism, and later on, they will be easily integrated into the new law on tourism that is being elaborated, I think, taking into account that these definitions will appear.
And of course, this will, ultimately, allow all sorts of support measures to be extended to the tourism business, because the conceptual notions will be more clearly formulated.
