This year spring in the Crimea came nearly one month early. The apricot and almond trees are in bloom, it is sunny in Yalta, and the temperature is up to 22 degrees Celsius. Resort employees are excited that the tourist season will start in late April. According to data collected by Crimean government-run spas, nearly 140 health resorts were already operating in late March, which is twice as many as last year. The peninsula has received 173,000 visitors, 11.2 percent more than last year (155,600 people for the same period in 2007).
THE CRIMEA AWAITS SIX MILLION TOURISTS
“The Crimea is expecting millions of visitors this season, despite the consequences of the November shipwreck that polluted the sea with mazut, a situation which is being actively exploited by our competitors,” said Volodymyr Saveliev, the Crimean Minister of Resorts and Tourism.
The number of foreign tourists in 2007 increased by 250 percent: they came from Turkey, Great Britain, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the US, and Poland. Saveliev thinks that if last year, the best in the past 15 years, a record number of guests — 5.8 million people, 12 percent more than in 2006 — visited the Crimea, then their numbers will top 6 million this year, which Ukraine’s president has proclaimed the Year of Tourism and Resorts.
The Crimea is busy preparing for the expected influx of tourists. Prydniprovska Railway is opening 83 new booking offices, including 48 in the Crimea. The Verkhovna Rada and the Crimean Council of Ministers have allocated 2.5 million hryvnias to prepare for the tourist season.
The European Soccer Championship-2012 will have a spin-off effect in the Crimea. Prime Minister Viktor Plakida hopes that Crimean sports bases will be used for training athletes for Euro-2012 and that important landmark sites will be included in tourist itineraries for people attending the championship. Investors are efficiently investing their money in the recreational branch. In recent years the amount of investments has grown significantly, and the total amount of foreign capital invested in the autonomy’s economy as of Jan. 1, 2008, has reached 4.9 million.
One of the key instruments for implementing the development strategy on the peninsula is the State Program of Social and Economic Development in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea until 2017, which was adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in 2007. Nearly 22 billion hryvnias will be allocated: 16.3 million hryvnias (75 percent) come from off-budget funds, while nearly 1.5 billion hryvnias come from local budgets. The Crimea, which offers one of the shortest transit routes to Europe, will become more integrated into the international transport network. The construction of the Crimea- Kuban transport crossing, the reconstruction of the Symferopil Republican Airport, and other projects will be an added boost.
“The Crimean Ministry of Resorts and Tourism has planned certain measures to mark the Year of Tourism and Resorts,” the head of the ministry explained. “Some of the traditional ones are the Eighth Congress of Physiotherapists and Spa Experts, the Pearl of the Crimea Republican Competition, the Eastern Crimean Resorts and Tourism Fair, a tourism convention called “In Memory of a Friend,” and scholarly-practical conferences on ethnographic and active tourism,” Saveliev said.
THE CRIMEA — SOCHI — TURKEY: THE ALTERNATIVE AND COMPETITION
According to financial forecasts, vacations, including May and Easter tours to the Crimea, will be 25 percent more expensive this year. This is a world trend: vacation costs are up by 30 percent in Egypt, Turkey, and Thailand, Crimean tourism operators say. The cultural attache at the Embassy of the Turkish Republic to Ukraine, Akhtem Changa has reported that Turkish resorts are expecting a 30-percent increase in the number of Ukrainian tourists. Last year 593,000 Ukrainians visited the opposite side of the Black Sea coast, and in 2008 at least 750,000 Ukrainian vacationers are expected.
If examined competently, the competition among the Russian resort of Sochi, the Crimea, and Turkey is a superficial view of the economic situation of these regions. The Turkish resort region of Antalya features a huge swath of hotels that have been constructed in the last decades. Although they provide a comfortable stay, the area is not rich in tourist sites. The Crimean Ministry of Resorts and Tourism plan to build up the half-empty space from Alushta to Sudak. The general planning scheme is already being developed. Huge investments are required: 51 investment projects are underway at a cost of nearly nine million hryvnias.
However, there is an area where neither Sochi nor Antalya can compete: historical, cultural, ethnographic, landscape, wine, pilgrim, speleological, and other kinds of tourism. The Crimea boasts over 11,500 historical, cultural, and architectural monuments, five state preserves, 33 protected areas, 87 natural sites, 13 of them of nationwide importance, and 10 preserved tracts of land.
The second sphere is the curative potential of the Crimea. There are 26 deposits of therapeutic mud and salt water as well as over 100 mineral springs of different chemical compositions. By a decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, 15 mud deposits and 13 large deposits of mineral water were included in the therapeutic category. This will be another priority in the development of the Crimean resort area.
“Without improvements to the legal and legislative base it is impossible to speak of the further development of tourism in the autonomy,” explained Maryna Slesareva, the Crimean Deputy Minister of Resorts and Tourism. “The normative base regulating the order of providing excursion services is practically nonexistent. The international standards for tourism-excursion services that were adopted in 1995 are out of date. In connection with the cancellation of licensing for excursion activities, the licensing conditions for foreign and domestic tourism regulating the provision of these kinds of services have also been cancelled. There are simply no other documents pertaining to services for tourists. So the development of new standards is a big problem.”
Another problem is the absence of a complete list of tour guide specialists, who must obtain permits for the right to accompany tourists, and qualification requirements for this category of specialist. This type of permit is issued only to guides and interpreters. Some of them work without any documentation, like mountain guides and sports instructors. According to the Law of Ukraine on Tourism, the list of professional tourist guide positions and required qualifications is confirmed by the central executive tourism agency. Although the latest version of the law came into force on Jan. 1, 2004, the State Tourism and Resorts Agency still has not confirmed the list.
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
“The Crimea is gradually becoming a year-round resort spot,” the Crimea’s tourism minister says. “The number of winter visitors has grown by 26 percent since 2007. During the New Year’s holiday 101 resorts were in operation. Alushta, Yevpatoria, and Yalta were especially popular. The spas in Saky and Yevpatoria were full even during the winter. This is further proof that once there is a corresponding medical base, tourists will start coming all year round. Such high-class hotels as the Oreanda, Palmira-Palas, and More are working stably, as well as big spas with health and treatment facilities. So the framework of the resort season in the Crimea is gradually expanding.”
In an effort to promote itself, the Crimea is taking part for the first time in tourism shows in Riga, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk, and making its traditional appearance in St. Petersburg, Israel, and Istanbul. The trade shows in Minsk, Almaty, and Tashkent are also important. But the main regions are Ukraine and Russia in the direction of the Volga region, the Urals, and Siberia.
“In order to present the recreational potential of the Crimea and the development of cooperation in the tourism sphere, a delegation from the Crimean Ministry of Resorts and Tourism took part in the work of the 28th International Tourism Exchange in Milan. Five thousand companies from 152 countries took part in the show,” Slesareva told journalists. “It was attended by 155,000 people. Our ministry was attending for the first time. The Crimean exhibit was visited by nearly 800 tour operators, tour agents, and other visitors. Italian tourist companies, like Gerada Tur, Ukr Tur, Skyland Travels, and Uniglobe offered their cooperation.
“There were other proposals. At the General Consulate of Ukraine in Milan we discussed ways and directions of cooperation between the Crimea and certain regions of Italy, as well as some cities in the Lombardy region. We reached an agreement with Antonio Longo Dorne, the president of the lake district in Piedmont, to provide consulting assistance to tour operators in the lake district of the Piedmont and the Crimea, to help them distribute information about the tourist appeal of these regions and cooperation in the hotel business. The Italians proposed several existing projects, and a few that are in the process of being completed, to train interns for Crimean tourism companies in Milan’s Bocconi University. This is one of the world’s top 20 educational institutions offering courses on international management and marketing strategies for resort and tourism companies,” said the Crimean deputy tourism minister.
