More than 5 million tourists visited St.Petersburg in 2010
The Head of the Investment and Strategic Projects Committee Alexey Chichkanov announced that the tourism income in
He claims that each ruble invested in the tourism industry returns with 2000 rubles. Mr. Chichkanov underlined that the number of complaints of tourists concerning safety and security in the city dramatically reduced. The number of tourist visits can be increased by the repeaters and development of the off-season tourism. Alexey Chichkanov mentioned that nowadays 75% of tourists visit St.Petersburg within May – September period. In order to change this tendency we need to develop events and congress tourism. One of the biggest challenges for the development of such types of tourism is lack of direct flights.
Mr. Chichkanov said that from 2011 the city will use the tracking system like everywhere in the world, counting the overnights, that helps to get precise information on how many tourists visited the city, what is the daily expenditure, etc. It’s also important to bear in mind that around 30% of tourists do not stay in hotels. During the last 5 years the hotel room capacity doubled, there are 631 hotels with more than 27 thousand rooms in the city, some of them represent international hotel brands.
Vice-president of Russian
He also mentioned promotion of small and new museums. “New modern arts museum “Erarta” on