Rostourism received the final results
of the research on the perception of image of Russia by foreign tourists, which
was made by request of the Higher School of Economics. The survey started in
the middle of March and ended in the beginning of April 2012, tourists who
speak English and who stayed for more than one day in Russia were
interviewed. They were tourists from 36 countries except for the CIS countries.
The interview took place in five Moscow
hotels (203 respondents) and eight hotels of Saint-Petersburg (100
respondents). An average age of tourists being interviewed was not more than 42
years old. Almost half of the respondents are tourists (42.1%), and the other
“half” are business travelers.
As it turned out, the foreigners’
perception of our country is still in the power of stereotypes – Russia is
strongly associated with historic places of interest and Orthodox culture, as
well as with the traditional set of vodka, caviar and matryoshka. The visitors
have hardly any idea about possibility of health getaways or medical treatments,
although the country has enormous resources for developing of such kinds of
tourism and promoting it on the international market.
They know little about
opportunity of active leisure in Russia
as well, although in the consciousness of foreigners, the image of our country
is strongly connected with such powerful natural-geographic brands as Volga,
Siberia, the Urals and lake
Baikal. It’s interesting
that Sochi,
despite its active promotion due to the Olympics, is still not known abroad.
The survey also showed that, in
general, foreign tourists treat Russia
as a very interesting tourist destination, 66.3% of tourists said that they have
changed their mind about Russia
after visiting it, 90.5% of them – changed their opinion for the better. And
the opinions of only 9.5% changed for the worse. At the same time, 88.4% of
tourists would recommend their friends to visit Russia, and only 11.6% - would not.
It’s interesting that only 2.6%
of the respondents called the country unfriendly, 28.4% don’t agree with such
statement, and 35% “would rather disagree”. Almost 40% of the respondents don’t
consider Russia
to be inconvenient for travelling. Other 39.9% incline to this position.
Despite the positive overall
perception of Russia
as a tourist destination, the results of the survey give a clear message on
what Rostourism should do to increase the attractiveness of the country. In
particular, more than 37% of foreign tourists agree that the prices for
low-quality services are too high in Russia (30.4% were not sure with
the answer, 17.8% “would rather agree”). There are still a lot of those who believe
that “there’s nothing more to see in Russia
except for Moscow and St. Petersburg”.
When getting ready to visit Russia, foreign
tourists mostly (21.9%) turn to national and international websites. 20.8%
listen to the opinion of their relatives, friends and colleagues. On the third
place are tourist brochures and travel guides (19.2%). For 14% of the tourists,
Russian websites that provide information in their native language, are
interesting. Then goes the experience of previous trips to Russia (10.9%), TV
and radio advertisement (7.8%) and the advertisement in printed publications
closes the rating (5.5%).
