Moscow Fresh: fresh ideas for tourists and sitizens

Moscow City Committee for Tourism and Hotel Industry introduced a new so called travel project Moscow Fresh. “The project is commenced by the young generation”, - noted the Head of the Commetee Sergey Shpilko in his opening remarks at the Moscow Fresh presentation held within MITF-2012 in Gostiniy Dvor. According to Mr. Shpilko, the project’s basic concern is to exploit new products, programs, places and Moscow’s events to domestic and foreign markets.  

The marketing plan proposes promoting a range of post-teen, for-profit public organizations (mostly independent) operating under one same brand and incorporated by a new creative approach to recreation of Moscovites and capital’s guests.

The project includes free tours, quest tours, mystic, theatricalized, hiking routs, tours on vintage-train, biking tours and others. Free regular tours about the city - Moscow Free Tour, already started up for tourists. Every morning at 10.45, mo natter rain or shine, a two-hours city walk tour covering all the major sites of the city center, starts off at Cyril and Methodius monument at Kitay-Gorod metro station. Young professional English-speaking guides confabulate passionately and work on a tips-only basis. Tourists can book free tours at www.MoscowFreeTour.com. Having discovered Moscow for the first time, most of them book paid excursion programs to learn more about the city. The Sales Director of Moscow Free Tour Copmany Artem Savinov believes that except for the facts, legends and stories, tourists are interested in a shortsleeve communication with the guide and getting the insider‘s view on where to eat, what to see, how to party.

Only in April 2012 more than 600 people went on the free guided tours. Afterwards, 150 of them took Moscow Free Tour paid programs. From 5 to 60 people attend free tours every day. Mr. Savinov noted that about 150-200 people attend free tours in such popular tourist cities as Berlin and Prague. With ist present rates, Moscow can be compared to Budapest and Krakow where about 30-50 foreigners attend free tours daily. In the season 2012 Moscow Free Tour plans to reach the level of 100 tourists for a free tour a day and 40 tourists – for paid tours. At the same time there shoud be not more than 15 people per one guide.

The Ambassador of the world’s travel chain CouchSurfing Kirill Lysenko introduced an even more facinating concept of Moscow’s hospitality. It’s an on-line service www.couchsurfing.org that includes more than three million people through out 246 countries. The original language of the web site is English, but there’s a Russian copy as well. The couchsurfers’ communication gives travellres an oportunity to see the country thourgh the eyes of a native as they are those, who are guides for their guests. As a rule, travelers mind the tourist inviroment to be a set of stereotypes and communicating with the natives is a different view that helps to seize the habbits, culture, recognize people, and pick up the tolerance.

The idea of couchserfing is to start an intercultural communication in a friendly and informal setting. It’s mostly popular in the US and Europe with the participants speaking 330 languages and living in over 79 thousand cities. The project sprung up in 1992 and came to Russia in 1995. By now 77 thousand people are registed in Russian project and more than 25 thousands of them are sitizens of Moscow and Moscow region.

There’s a project planned for Muscvites – City InSideOut. At the presentation it was introduced by its author Helga Pataki. The City InSideOut project is first of all a communitee of people who prefer creatively diverse natural history tours which include visiting ancient courts, exploring life of bygone epochs, talking to inhabitants of ancient houses. Mrs. Pataki spends the income on books, bagging a huge library on the natural history.

Without any doubt, both Muscovites and Moscow’s guests visit the Bulgakov’s House Museum which is opened day and night. „About seven thousand people visit the museum monthly“ – said the PR-manager of the museum Liya Turovskaya. People come for theatricalized tours, romantic night walks, mysitcal trips about Bulgakov’s places described in The Master and Margarita novel. The tour starts off at Bulgakov’s House museum every Friday at 3.00p.m., 5.00p.m. and 7.00p.m.

The Street Adventures project helps to take a look at streets, houses, monuments and museums from a new angle. It’s an individual tour-game available at any day and any time with the help of interactive sms-tasks. Having bought the ticket at www.streetadventure.com, you can begin your trip any time by yourself or as a part of a team. The project was introduced by its coordinators Sergey Sobolev and Nikita Bogdanov within the presentation in Gostiniy Dvor. They reported that the quest lovers generate the flow of 150 thousand riddles solved, 1.5 players a week and 30 discovered places in an hour. With the help of Street Adventures’ sms, one can not only explore Moscow solving its’ riddles, but also Saint Petersburg and Kazan. This summer the authors plan to add 4-5 cities more.

New uncommon tours and creatively different routes will be promoted within Moscow Fresh with the assistance of RUTI. According to Mr. Shpilko, they will be in demand after visa regime simplification when low-cost flights will be available and people of different income, interests and hobbies will travel to Moscow.  On the basis of internet proposals they will be able to choose low-priced programs on their own. „Moscow Fresh mostly includes social travel projects, - explained Mr. Shpilko. They shouldn’t be matched against classic group tours booked through a tour operator“.