ST. PETERSBURG, December 5. /TASS/. The total number of tourists visiting districts in the Northwestern Federal District will grow to 35 million by 2030, head of the ProGorod Project Office (VEB RF), Ksenia Titova, told TASS at the St. Petersburg International Tourism Forum - Travel Hub. Travel!
"By 2030, the total number of tourists visiting the Northwestern Federal District will amount to 35 million," she said.
At the forum, the expert presented the project office's tourist schemes - the Russian North and Arctic, and the Russian Baltic. Trips to the Russian North and the Arctic - those are primarily the Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Murmansk and Karelia Regions - will take about one fifth, or 7.5 million visits, of the target tourist traffic by 2030, she said. This is the most urbanized territory in the Russian Arctic and at the same time it is accessible from a transport point of view, she added. The current number of tourists visiting this part of the country is estimated at 4.5 million.
"The main task today in developing tourism to the Russian North is not to make it massive, but to preserve its privacy, unique specifics, offering visits to locations more remote from regional centers, offering new tourist experience and non-standard leisure," she continued.
One of key priorities in this regard is to have comfortable infrastructures and to redistribute the flow from "busy" destinations to other interesting tourist locations. The project office's analysts forecast an increase in average daily expenses per person, as well as an increase in the trips term to seven days - right now most visits to the Northwest are about five days long. These targets will be achieved due to new points of attraction, new locations.
The expert named major development priorities - the Onega Petroglyphs, the Kenozero National Park, the Kola Superdeep Borehole, and others, including Veliky Ustyug, to cut season-dependence through health tourism.
The Russian Baltic project
According to the project office, the Kaliningrad Region (the Russian Baltic tour scheme) will be able to receive more than 10% of the tourist flow to the Northwestern Federal District by 2030. "We forecast the tourist traffic increase to that region by 2030 will make almost 4 million, or 3.9 million to be more exact, while today's figure is 2.5 million. The main infrastructural factor on which we rely here is the airport's upgrade," the expert said.
"As for 4 million tourists by 2030, we plan about 200,000 would be foreign tourists. This is practically the "pre-COVID" rate; right now the figure is about half as much. We expect it will be regained, in particular, due to the developing partnership with China," she said. The plan is also to develop new destinations with the UAE, India and Central Asia.
The main challenges in tourism development in the region are clear dependence on seasons and the imbalanced distribution of tourists in favor of the western part, thus the project's main idea is to direct the flow of travelers to the region's east. Priority locations for infrastructure developments are the resort area along the Curonian Spit, Kaliningrad and Chernyakhovsk.
The set tasks will be addressed under priority projects in the Russian Baltic tour scheme, she continued. Those are the congress center in Kaliningrad on the Oktyabrsky Island and a family leisure park in Chernyakhovsk that will serve 1.5 million visitors a year. These new points of attraction and high-quality offers will lead to an increase in the average trip budget.
The tourist schemes will be implemented by the Silver Necklace of Russia Project Office, supported by Russia's Ministry of Economic Development.