Russian and international tourists are going to be attracted by wooden cottages and rural cuisine

Tens of eco villages may be built in the Moscow region, designed to captivate the international tourists. As the Deputy Regional Minister of physical education, sport, tourism and youth work Oleg Zholobov told “Izvestie”, before the end of the year the department will suggest to the municipalities to allocate land for the villages.   It is planned that the rural settlements of Podmoskovie (near Moscow region) will begin to develop their own unique tourist attractions already in the start of 2013.

Each weekend, thousands of Moscow’s residents will be able to visit these eco villages, as well as residents from nearby regions, and also international tourists, believes Mr Zholobov. The settlements will attract visitors with their traditional wooden houses (called “izaba” in Russian) with sleeping places above an oven, national cuisine and folklore, folk games and festivals and will also give visitors the opportunity to try themselves in the role of a rural villager: milk a cow, feed the chickens and pigs, carry water with the help of a beam, spend the night on a hayloft etc.  Financial support for the construction of these villages is planned to come from local budgets.

“The development of internal and incoming tourism to the Moscow region has been named a priority direction by the governor Sergei Shoigu, - explains Oleg Zholobov. – Each rural settlement region will have the opportunity to develop their own unique trait to attract tourists. Exactly what kind of trait, the regions will decide themselves: the organization of a new fishing village, some kind of thematic event or something else. The ministry, in their turn, will present those projects which it finds most interesting”.

Experts in the field of tourism predict that the project will be a success; however some believe that it would be best to involve private investors in the building process of the actual eco villages. “Authorities should provide suitable sites which have road access, car parks, shops, and make sure the villages are accessible by public transport”, - believes the vice president of the Russian Union of Travel Industr Yuri Barzikin. From his words, the main flow of eco tourists will be made up of families and youth groups from Moscow.

Ecologists have said that each village should be made up from a maximum of 10 houses. “There should be no more than 30 people in one visit, or else there could be harm done to the surrounding nature”, - announced the co-chairman of the “Ecozashita” group Vladimir Slivyak.

As “Izvestya” has already written, according to data from experts, eco-tourism around the world is growing much faster than any other kind of tourism – beach, event etc. It takes up around 20% of the total volume of the world’s tourism market. In Russia, over the past 6 years the number of eco-tourists increases in double annually. At the moment, out of the total number of participants in tours to Kamchatka, Altai, Ural, into the woods and reserves of the Moscow region, around 80% is made up of Russians. With regards to the rest of the world, eco-tourism is especially popular with residents of Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA.