In 2020, new Arctic programs will be launched in Kamchatka including tours to the Commander Islands, the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Chukotka, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk regions. EcoTourism Expert came to know that the program will provide both foreign and Russian ice-class vessels capable of visiting areas inaccessible to ordinary cruise ships.
According to the head of the Agency for Tourism and External Relations of the Territory, Elena Stratonova, in recent years, a new type of tourism has been actively developing on the Kamchatka Peninsula - expeditionary sea tourism. There are foreign or Russian passenger ships, on the routes the passengers visit specially protected natural areas. Kamchatka tour operators are the only ones in the Far East who organise expeditionary cruise programs along the Northeast Passage.
Despite the rather high cost of such cruises, they are in great demand, and places are booked a year in advance.
Arctic tours are very demanded among tourists from Germany and the USA.
According to the Agency for Tourism and External Relations of the Territory, in 2019 the number of arriving cruise ships almost doubled compared to the previous year. At the same time, the number of passengers increased by 50 percent.
In 2019, the Kamchatka Territory welcomed 20 airliners, which delivered almost 19.5 thousand tourists to the region. In total, more than 35 thousand foreign tourists visited the peninsula in 2019, which shows a 40% increase compared to 2018.
During the V Eastern Economic Forum, the heads of the Far Eastern regions signed an agreement on the joint development of cruise tourism on the Kamchatka Peninsula. In particular, it provides for the development of a new cruise route, which will unite the Peninsula and Primorsky Territories, the Sakhalin Oblast and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.
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