MOSCOW, September 27 (Itar-Tass) - Chinese investors are ready to invest in tourist projects in Russia, head of the Federal Tourism Agency (Rostourism) Alexander Radkov said.
Radkov said he had returned from China where Russian regions presented their ideas on the development of tourism. “There were many interesting projects to what China riveted attention,” the official said.
“China is a powerful market: every year 100 million of Chinese citizens leave abroad. Russia has the unique potential and needs investments very much. Both Russia and China seek to maintain investment cooperation and develop tourism,” Radkov said.
In the recent two years the flow of Chinese tourists to Russia has considerably increased. According to Rostourism, last year the number of Chinese tourists increased by over 40 percent as compared with the year 2011 and amounted to about 350,000 people, Radkov said.
“Chinese tourists and investors are mainly interested in Moscow and St Petersburg. They rivet less attention to other regions because they have insufficient information,” he said, adding, “Now we’re trying to inform them that it is necessary to invest in Russian regions as well.”
According to Rostourism’s data, in the first six months of 2013 over 500,000 Russian tourists visited China while 130,000 Chinese tourists visited Russia.