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Foreigners’ impression of Moscow is out of date

08:07, 22 июля 2011

The Global Event Partners-2011 Summit has just ended in Moscow. This is the world’s largest community of leading business travel companies. Among its clients are major transnational companies with their incentive trips and conferences around the globe. The summit’s main objectives were to introduce Moscow as a “growing-point” in terms of corporate tourism to over 200 top-managers from corporate and incentive agencies, to present the city itself and of course to contribute to intensive professional companionship.

The Global Event Partners summits have been held every year since 1999, every year in a new city, perspective in terms of inbound corporate tourism. Moscow was chosen as meeting place for MICE top-managers at the GEP-2009 summit in Alaska. The Russian capital won the right to host the event by beating Turkish Istanbul and Italian Florence.

The four-day summit’s schedule featured educational seminars, business meetings, familiarization trips to Moscow’s hotels and conference centers, visits to the city’s museums, galleries and historical monuments.

“Not only should Moscow successfully host the 2018 Football World Cup, but also appear as a modern tourist center” – said the Chairman of Moscow Tourism Committee Mr. Sergey Shpilko during the summit’s opening ceremony. “I don’t want to hide the truth – we do have many problems” – admitted Mr. Shpilko adding that among the major problems are traffic jams, lack of modern congress-halls, visa issues, expensive airfares and poorly functioning tourism education system.

Mr. Shpilko added that the way the foreigners saw Moscow 20 years ago is now out of date and has nothing to do with reality. For one, in terms of business-class hotels and quality of services Moscow is now almost on an average European level. The capital – he says – features major hotel brands and all 4-5-star hotels were constructed in the last 20 years. “In 1990 there were at most three hotels that could be considered 4-star by stretching the point along the road from Kempinski Hotel in the city center to the Sheremetyevo Airport. Today there are 17 hotels, mostly 5-star, managed by international hotel operators” – explained Sergey Shpilko adding that during the recent economic recession alone seven new 4- and 5-star hotels with 3 thousand beds were opened in Moscow.

In a year’s time the Tourism Committee should achieve a set of services normal for a modern metropolis. According to Mr. Shpilko it implies the creation of information portal, call-center, renewal of street navigation system and so on. Besides that he deems necessary reviewing of mass events policy in the city. Practically it includes introduction of a new format of such events. As an example he used Military Music Bands Festival “Spasskaya Tower” and numerous dramatizations of significant military and historical events of the Russian history. Thus one of the city’s parks may host a X century Vikings battle featuring over 2 thousand participants.    

Sergey Shpilko noted that Moscow is changing even though it still remains a blind-spot for international community. However the head of Moscow tourism is sure that everything can be fixed, partly thanks to the “decent funding” allocated for the promotion and re-branding of the city, including the presentations at world’s leading travel and business trade fairs.

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