"Space Moscow" presented at MITF
At the MITF exhibition which took place
from 16 to 18 of May in Moscow Gostiny Dvor Muscovites and
Master
classes, presentations, seminars and round tables were held for tour business?
professionals within the business program. The All-Russian conference
Development of Event and Youth Tourism and the conference Orthodox Moscow:
Hospitality and Kindness were held for the first time within the fair. Previous
year’s project Capital’s Hospitality Quality Mark continued its work this year
and was awarded as one of the best representatives of the Moscow hotel
industry.
The deputy chairman of the exhibition
Moscow City Committee for Tourism and Hotel Industry said that the last day of
the fair falls on May, 18, which is the of the historical and cultural heritage
and the night of museums. The
capital's tourist authorities offered their own program this day – the Great
tour about Moscow. The program offers 24 excursions free of charge for all the
exhibition’s guests. The project includes almost all range of city tours –
walking, bus, bike, museum, for children, theatrical as well as a boat trip and
a trip on Bulgakov's tram.
General
Director of Atlantis Line Natalia Andronova presented a new project called Moscow
Space. At the fair in Gostiny Dvor it was presented on a separate stand. ‘The
project is based on a planetary scale event, as it’s our country where the
great breakthrough in space happened. In Moscow there are objects of
international standard connected with space, they are the Memorial Museum of
Cosmonautics, Planetarium and the Geology Museum of RAS, where one of the
world's largest collections of meteorites is assembled’, said Ms. Andronova.
Successful
international experience of similar projects has shown that the theme of the
outer space is one of the most promising for event tourism. For example, The
Museum of aviation and cosmonautics in Washington, DC annually accepts more
than eight million people. By the number of visitors it takes second place after
the Louvre which is the most popular museum in the world. Russia has everything
it needs for leadership in the field of space tourism, but the country still
lags behind in terms of tourist attraction development. The project aims at
creating a national space product which wouldn’t yield world analogues.
Space
Moscow is supported by the municipal committee on tourism. By the start of the
fair a special website москвакосмическая.рф will be launched. There one will be
able to make a virtual trip about the most interesting objects collected on a
special map made by ISS. Natalia Andronova believes that the advent of such
brand as Space Moscow will lead to positive changes on the tourism market, but
the work will take more than one year: ‘Together with the Russian Union for
Tour Industry we will form a special committee on space tourism, innovative
technologies and patriotic education, which will be seriously and purposefully
promoting this trend’.
The
director of the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, space pilot Alexander Lazutkin
outlined the main tasks of the museum. Besides showing the history of space
exploration and the future of space, it is the elimination of space illiteracy.
‘Unfortunately, I often come across the fact that pupils have don’t know basic
things about space’, he complained. According to Mr. Lazutkin, about 300
thousand people per year visit the museum, but the technical possibility of
increasing the capacity by two-three times is already being considered.
Alexander
Lazutkin shared the plans of the museum: a lifelong dream is to conduct theatrical
excursions which have no analogues anywhere in the world ‘We’ll try to create
an illusion of being in space, that is to arrange so that people could feel it.
Now we are working on scripts of these programs.’