Russia proposes to attract Chinese tourists to the border “tourist zones”
11/19/2021
Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Alexei Yevsikov uses the convenient location of the form of interaction between the Russian and Chinese border provinces.
RUSSIA LOOKS IN CHINA AS A MAIN SUPPLIER OF TOURISTS
By 2030, Russia wants to increase its annual income from $ 11 billion to $ 22.3 billion a year. This means that the foreign tourist flow to our country should increase by 10 million people. Estimating the prospects of overseas markets, it can be assumed that 5 million tourists will be visitors from China.
The increase in tourist flow from the PRC and ways to increase profitability from inbound tourism became one of the main topics of discussion at the VIII Russian-Chinese Tourism Tour, which was organized by the Russian Association “World without Borders” and the Chinese Association of Tourism Services (CATS).
Speaking at the event, Alexey Yevsikov said that the Chinese border provinces are already implementing their own tourism development programs, which are focused on attracting wealthy tourists from the regions of China to the northern countries. The speaker is confident that neighboring Russian regions can successfully interact with colleagues from the Middle Kingdom in this area and achieve a noticeable synergistic effect.
In China, as the southern provinces, access to northern countries will expand.
TRAVEL BELTS CONCEPT
“In terms of further steps on the tourist flow from China, I would create a separate area within the framework of the Russian-Chinese intergovernmental commission on cooperation between the regions of the Far East and Northeast China.” In this commission, for a start, diplomatic missions can be used to develop two cross-border zones. “
Explaining the idea of creating such “belts”. In his opinion, it would be logical to coordinate the tourism development plans of the Chinese and Russian sides.
NEW CORRIDORS
Commenting on the previous speakers of the forum, who talked about the possibility of increasing the tourist flow from China to Russia by 5 million people after the pandemic, Alexey Yevsikov drew attention to new transport and logistics corridors, which did not yet exist in 2019.
“In the near future, between the cities of Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, the first large road bridge across the Amur will be put into operation, which is designed for freight, passenger and bus transport. In addition, the construction of the first cross-border road has already begun, which will carry up to 2 million passengers a year, ”he said.
HOTELS FOR CHINESE STILL NOT ENOUGH
At the same time, the speaker lamented that the tourist and hotel structures of Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk are not yet sufficiently developed, and so far we can only talk about one-day tourism from China.
“There are a lot of questions, and before the cross-border movement begins, we need to think about what additional facilities for tourists from China are,” the diplomat clarified and used not to forget about the possibilities of cruise tourism along the transboundary Amur River.
Editorial office of “Vestnik ATOR”
Photo: courtesy of the Association “World without Borders”