SIMFEROPOL, October 25. /TASS/. Crimea and Egypt can start exchanging experience in the tourism industry, Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Georgy Muradov told TASS on Friday.
"It is possible to exchange experience in the hotel and tourism business with some countries, for example, Tunisia and Egypt. That’s quite possible," he said.
Muradov noted that training African students in the field of tourism was one of the promising areas of cooperation. However, this is not the only area of training for foreign students.
"We would like students from Africa to come to study at Crimean higher educational establishments. We have those faculties and academies, higher educational institutions that are of considerable interest to Africans, that is, medicine, construction, architecture, agriculture, agricultural processing, hotel and tourism business. We could see that Africans are more willing to study in Crimea than, for example, in Siberia due to [Crimea’s] climate," he said.
In 2018, Crimea received about 6.8 mln tourists, a record number during post-Soviet years. Crimea’s authorities expect that number to reach 7.5 mln in 2019, while in 2020, the tourist flow could exceed the record number during the Soviet era (8 mln people).
The Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, a city with a special status on the Crimean Peninsula where most residents are ethnic Russians, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the authorities that came to power amid riots during the February 2014 coup in Ukraine.
Crimea and Sevastopol adopted declarations of independence on March 11, 2014. They held a referendum on March 16, 2014, in which 96.7% of Crimeans and 95.6% of Sevastopol voters chose to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. President Vladimir Putin signed the reunification treaty on March 18, 2014.