Macedonia
notes the growth of interest from the tourists’ side: last year the tourist
growth totaled up to a 25% increase and from the beginning of this year, an 11%
increase. In this connection the Government decided to support the tourism
industry. They decided to invest 2.5 million Euros per year, which is double
the amount seen in the previous year’s subvention. As settimes.com has
informed, special support will be provided to the local tour operators, the
agriculture industries and the wine industries.
Despite the fact that
Russians are not required to have a visa to come to Macedonia (non-visa regime works
until March the 15th, 2013), they do not choose this country as a place to go
on holidays. Mrs. Tatiana Vetrova, the Head of the tourist department of the
company “European Collection” has mentioned that only a few tours are sold
during the summer.
To her opinion, the
main obstacle is the lack of regular direct air connections. The tourists have
to fly via third party countries like Turkey,
Czech Republic,
Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania. “Schengen” visa holders
can enter via Greece as
there are trains from Thessalonica to Skopje,
but the trip is expensive and the train schedule is not very comfortable.
An urge to be
reminded, that two years ago the Ministry of Tourism of Macedonia suggested organizing mutual charter
flights from Russia.
In the summer of 2010 the Moscow tour operator
R-Tours booked several charters to Macedonia. However after the season
closed the company stopped working on this destination. As R-Tours manager
Irina Fedorina has explained, the project was declared as unprofitable and
there are no plans to resume it because of the lack of demand.
The deputy of the
General Director of “Balkan Express” company Alexey Markelov is sure that the
most famous touristic area of the country is Lake Ohrid,
where lots of ancient orthodox churches from the medieval times can be found.
Not to mention that the most important center of the Slavic written language
can be found located there. Now the entire coast is full of hotels and resorts
offering cheap accommodation and holidays. “Unfortunately only individual
tourists from Russia
tend to visit this area and mostly with religious aims, unlike the Bulgarian
tourists for whom this area is much sought after”, he noted.
