Resume of the Tourist Season 2010 in Karelia

On December, 14th the Ministry of Economic Development of Karelia hold a regular meeting of Karelia's Tourist Companies Council. The session summarised the tourist season 2010 on the basis of the data obtained from monitoring of tourist activity at the major sights of Karelia.

As the participants of the session reported, in 2010 it was possible to stop recession of tourism development in Karelia. Kizhi open-air museum has received 167,733 visitors, that is 6,117 people more than in 2009. 131,000 tourists visited the Valaam archipelago, that is 10,000 people more than in 2009. A slight decrease in tourist traffic  was observed in Kivach Nature Reserve – from 79,000 in 2009 to 75,000 in 2009. The tour operators of Karelia provided transportation service for 45,000 guests on the Kem - Solovetskie Islands passenger-line . When the new carrier was launched, the tourist traffic to Solovki through the town of Belomorsk has grown. In summer 2010 the passenger-line from Belomorsk to the Solovetsky Archipelago transported 6,000 tourists.

The Council stated that the off-budget investments in tourism infrastructure remained at the level of 2009 – about 450 million roubles. None of 43 off-budget investment projects implemented this year in tourism was cut down.

The participation of Karelia's travel companies in exhibitions and trade fairs in 2011 was considered by the Council. The representatives of tourist companies are interested in International Tourist Exhibition MATKA (Helsinki, January 21-24), ITB (Berlin, March 9-13), Intourmarket (Moscow, March 12-15), MITT (Moscow, March 16-19), MITF (Moscow, May 12-14), Leisure (Moscow, September 21-24). The Ministry of Economic Development included these exhibitions in the exihibition list supported by the Government of Karelia in 2011. Karelian Government will support informational and advertising promotion of Karelia as a tourist region. This will boost the growth of incoming tourism, and consequently the contribution of tourism in the economy of Karelia will increase.

The Council informed about the decision of Sortavala Region Administration to hold International Fishing Festival in Sortavala on August 12-14th, 2011. In order to support development of specialized tourism the Ministry of Economic Development of the republic of Karelia plans to form a  committee to arrange the festival.

gov.karelia.ru