Taras Fomchenkov
for EcoToutism Expert 
The Russian deputies want to launch a card for free travels in Russia for teenagers and young people from 18 to 22 years old. The initiative came from Vice Speaker of the State Duma Boris Chernyshov who proposed to set up a card with similar and even somewhat expanded functions - by analogy with the Pushkin Card - and call it “Beautiful Russia”.
The legislator came up with this initiative and also sent a letter to the Ministry of Economic Development. In his opinion, the new “travel card” will allow to pay for excursions, cruises and tours, as well as to purchase economy class tickets for trains, buses or airplanes. According to the deputy, the services of campsites, tourist centres, hotels and hostels that are the programme’s partners should become accessible and conditionally free for the Russian young people.
According to Boris Chernyshov, the distinctive feature of such a card should be that the amount is not cancelled if unused during a year (he proposes its limit to be 30,000 roubles). “It is important that (unlike the “Pushkin Card”) the funds not used during the year are not cancelled and can be spent next year. This will give young people a choice to make tourist trips regularly or save money on the card and make their cherished dream come true, for example, to see the crater of a volcano in Kamchatka or reach the North Pole travelling there by an icebreaker,” the legislator said.
It is assumed that it will be possible to save money on the card for five years, and during this period of time, in general, the dream of visiting Kamchatka or the North Pole can really come true.
According to Boris Chernyshov, the popular “Pushkin Card” is much in demand despite the recent corruption scandals (fraud using fake Pushkin Cards). However, every second Russian young person aged 14 to 22 received it in 2022 alone. At the same time, the financing of the federal project “Pushkin Card” in 2023 remained at the level of 2022 and will amount to 16 bn roubles. It is quite possible that the “Beautiful Russia” project could be also popular among young people, especially if the right level of control over spending the money is provided and a sufficient amount of budgetary money is allocated.
Moreover, according to the results of the study conducted several years ago by the Federal Agency for Tourism together with the Biletix online booking service, the Russian students most often choose domestic destinations for travelling. About 72 percent of the young Russians aged 18 to 25 book air tickets for flights to the Russian regions. It is worth mentioning that in their student days, girls travel much more often than boys - 59 percent versus 41 percent. But in general, in the survey “14-35” held by the Centre for Sociological Research from May 24 to 27, 2022, more than 6.5 thousand young people aged 14 to 35 from 85 regions took part, and the survey showed that the vast majority of respondents (88.6 percent) expressed their interest in travelling in Russia, and 62.1 percent actively travel around the country.
Among the features inherent in the younger generation in choosing a place to travel to, the sociologists note that young people are very much spontaneous in choosing their vacation destination - the bookings are on average 1-2 weeks in advance, or even less - they take their decision to go on their journeys just “the night before” because it is much easier for them to do so than for adults. Naturally, young people are much more active than adults when choosing and booking travel services using the Internet and various mobile gadgets, discussing them on chats in instant messengers, social networks, reading review sites and taking into account the opinions of influential bloggers. Of course, it is the price that “is decisive”. If it is possible to use promotional codes, discounts, special offers, last-minute tours and save on a trip, the young people use this opportunity.
In a word, the “Beautiful Russia” project can really become a very popular tool for the development of domestic tourism.
By the way, regional tour operators have been asking for some time to test such an idea in practice. And some of them have already come up with a proposal to include the payment for the youth’s tourist trips into the Pushkin Card.
Certainly, the idea is good, the president of the National Association of Event Tourism Specialists (NAET) Oleg Alekseyev comments on the initiative for EcoTourism EXPERT, and says there are several “buts”.
“If you remember, a very large corruption scam, fraudulent schemes were revealed with the “Pushkin Card”. I assume that something similar may happen to the “Beautiful Russia” card, unless, of course, the most serious control is properly established,” the expert believes.
At the same time, according to Oleg Alekseyev, very few specialized tourism products are offered to young people in Russia today.
“Our young people prefer to travel abroad, for example, to the neighbouring countries. And they go on their own, the number of such tourists is growing. The fact is that for our young people, some kind of active tourism is more attractive and they are less interested in excursion programmes. Of course, there are activities, there are trekking routes in the Caucasus, Altai, Baikal, Karelia, but the leading tour operators practically do not offer such tourism products,” he concluded.
By the way, a separate research of the destinations most popular among young people has not been conducted in Russia. Really, there were various competitions, but the latest relevant information about them is dated 2021 when the Youth Tourism Centre held a competition of tourist routes with the support of the Russian Geographical Society.
At that time, travel trails in Karelia, the Kaliningrad Region, Kalmykia and Adygeya were among the top ten finalists. The Crimean Peninsula, the Republics of Buryatia and Tyva were also awarded, as well as the destinations in the Urals popular thanks to the industrial tourism developed in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk. Sakhalin is worth special mentioning as the region is remote from the main tourism destinations, which turned out to be very attractive for our young people, as well as the amazing nature of the Sakhalin Island.
