A socially oriented non-financial development institution and a major organizer of nationwide and international conventions; exhibitions; and business, public, youth, sporting, and cultural events.

The Roscongress Foundation is a socially oriented non-financial development institution and a major organizer of nationwide and international conventions; exhibitions; and business, public, youth, sporting, and cultural events. It was established in pursuance of a decision by the President of the Russian Federation.

The Foundation was established in 2007 with the aim of facilitating the development of Russia’s economic potential, promoting its national interests, and strengthening the country’s image. One of the roles of the Foundation is to comprehensively evaluate, analyse, and cover issues on the Russian and global economic agendas. It also offers administrative services, provides promotional support for business projects and attracting investment, helps foster social entrepreneurship and charitable initiatives.

Each year, the Foundation’s events draw participants from 209 countries and territories, with more than 15,000 media representatives working on-site at Roscongress’ various venues. The Foundation benefits from analytical and professional expertise provided by 5,000 people working in Russia and abroad.

The Foundation works alongside various UN departments and other international organizations, and is building multi-format cooperation with 212 economic partners, including industrialists’ and entrepreneurs’ unions, financial, trade, and business associations from 86 countries worldwide, and 293 Russian public organizations, federal and regional executive and legislative bodies of the Russian Federation.

The Roscongress Foundation has Telegram channels in Russian t.me/Roscongress, English – t.me/RoscongressDirect, Spanish – t.me/RoscongressEsp and Arabic t.me/RosCongressArabic. Official website and Information and Analytical System of the Roscongress Foundation:roscongress.org.

Tourism Cash Flows: Exporting Tourism

Pavilion G, Conference Hall G6
KEY CONCLUSIONS
Tourism is becoming a significant part of the Russian economy

56 million of our citizens traveled around the Russian Federation last year, 24.4 million tourists came to our country; those are good numbers. The contribution of tourism to the Russian Federation’s economy is 3.47% of GDP, or 3 trillion roubles. <...> The share of tourism in GDP can grow to 5% and amount to over 5 trillion roubles — Oleg Safonov, Head, Federal Agency for Tourism.

21.6 million people visited Moscow and spent 860 billion roubles in Russia’s capital. This is approximately 4% of Moscow’s GRP. The potential is not exhausted, but underestimated. Our task is to bring this figure to 8–10% — Sergei Cheryomin, Head of Department for Foreign Economic Activity and International Relations, Moscow City Government; Chairman of the Board, Business Council for Cooperation with the Republic of India.

Tourism industry development requires an integrated approach

Tourism is a branch of economy. It is an industry of hospitality, which cannot develop on its own; we can create comfortable conditions for visiting only in symbiosis with all 53 industries. <...> To sum up the Development of Domestic and Incoming Tourism for 2011-2018 Federal Targeted Programme, I should say that during this time the infrastructure saw the following investments: more than 27 billion roubles of federal budget funds, more than 8 billion of regional funds and over 80 billion of extra-budgetary funds. More than 250,000 jobs were created. <...> We are preparing a new Federal Targeted Program for 2019-2025: we already have applications from 51 regions worth more than 80 billion roubles for financing from the federal budget, about 17 billion roubles from regional budget and more than 400 billion of extra-budgetary funds — Oleg Safonov, Head, Federal Agency for Tourism.

ISSUES
Competition in the tourism sector is escalating

Regional and global competition: companies fight for the same customers. People split their holidays because they want to increase the number of experiences — Marina Usenko, Partner, Cushman & Wakefield.

The lack of professional competencies among representatives of the Russian tourism industry

Tourism itself is the representatives of small and medium business. This is the only industry that finds it very difficult to form its needs. Tourism business should be viewed as a business. Many members of the industry cannot find a business approach to what they do — Olga Tkacheva, Deputy General Director for Strategic Development and Marketing, Flotiliya.

SOLUTIONS
Modernization of statistical accounting and performance criteria

It is important to seriously upgrade statistical accounting. I suppose that the number of tourists is higher, but we cannot give a more accurate figure. It is necessary to use the advances of the digital economy and the possibilities of geolocation. <...> Based on that, we could also count the money flow of tourism industry. And if we do this, the direct contribution of tourism to GDP can be higher — Oleg Safonov, Head, Federal Agency for Tourism.

North Caucasus Development Corporation has a grand mission: to create a medical cluster. Each republic of the North Caucasus and Stavropol Krai will have a rehabilitation clinic. There is money to build them, but the question is: how do those clinics turn profit? All around the world, the efficiency of such facilities is not estimated incrementally, but by a set of effects. <...> The money invested in the balneological projects does not return directly — Sergey Kharitonov, General Director of North Caucasus Development Corporation.

Introducing a visa-free transit regime

The experiment in China gave unique economic results within 5 days. Transit tourists would gladly spend a day here for the brightest of experiences. <...> All this would multiply the effect for Moscow budget — Sergei Cheryomin, Head of Department for Foreign Economic Activity and International Relations, Moscow City Government; Chairman of the Board, Business Council for Cooperation with the Republic of India.

Improving the quality of service and transport accessibility

Truly high requirements are imposed on the cars, because comfort is the most important criterion for a railway travel — Petr Ivanov, General Director of Federal Passenger Company.

Finland offers a tour to Murmansk for those who love fishing. Tourists come to Helsinki and get a charter to Murmansk, but this involves three types of transportation. We create alliances with carriers, hotels and other participants of this process — Hanna Lauren, Director, Finnair Plc.

Information support

There is a great number of global media holdings in our country. We create a huge amount of content about tourism, that just needs to be packaged. And then we are ready to share that content —translate it or do something with it. That is the content that will bring travelers back to us again. We need to invest in information — Ruslan Novikov, General Director of Argumenty I Facty Ltd.

Individual and special approach in tourism

Over 4 years, the number of Chinese tourists taking a railway tour showed a 4-fold increase. Europe holds the first place today. We also focus on the Indian and Indonesian markets which show great interest in Russian tourism products — Petr Ivanov, General Director of Federal Passenger Company.

We have unique places and facilities now — for example, the Vostochny Cosmodrome. The Russian Far East is a magnet for the Asian market. It takes two hours by plane to get to the airports of the Russian Far East from Japan, China or Korea. The economic effect that we can produce there is much greater than possibilities of the centre of Russia — Denis Tikhonov, General Director, Corporation for Far East Development..

China’s Heihe and Blagoveshchensk are located opposite each other on the banks of the Amur River and are unique for the Asian region. Now our governments are discussing the creation of a cross-border zone for tourism and economic cooperation. In order to achieve maximum results, cities need to develop economic integration — Qin Enting, Chairman of Heihe Municipal People’s Congress.

There is such a thing as sports tourism. It was well developed in the USSR, a huge number of employees from various enterprises traveled around the country. We are reviving that trend — Ilya Galaev, President, VFSO Trudovye Rezervy.

The material was prepared by the Russian news agency TASS