(KZN.RU, January 28, Alina Berezhnaya). Last year, 3 million 200 thousand tourists visited Kazan; it is 14% more than in 2017. Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan, noted at the Business Monday that it was important for the city to overcome the 3 million tourists’ milestone and spoke about the plans for 2030 that is to welcome the 5 millionth guest.
“This year we overcame a big milestone: we took the bar of a three millionth tourist. More and more people come to us, we are ahead of such veterans of Russian tourism as Suzdal, Yaroslavl, Yekaterinburg, and Sergiev Posad”, I. Metshin commented on the results. “We set the bar for 2030 to welcome the 5 millionth tourist. This means to go ahead of cities such as St. Petersburg, Berlin, Munich, and Toronto. Yes, this is a heavy task, but we are making strong plans, we declare ourselves at tourism fairs, we work with colleagues, for example, Astana, Paris and other cities”.
The number of foreign tourists among the guests of Kazan has increased. Residents of China, Colombia, Germany, Iran, and the USA visited the capital of Tatarstan, said Daria Sannikova, the director of the Tourism Promotion Committee.
Most often, tourists came to Kazan by train, but the number of travelers using planes increased by 3.2%. This was facilitated by the opening last year of new flights to Alanya, Tbilisi, Batumi, Tehran, Bologna, Minsk, Pardubice, Haikou, Sharjah. Moreover, now flights from Kazan go to Makhachkala, Yaroslavl, Usinsk, Novosibirsk, and Belgorod.
Daria Sannikova said that the portrait of an average tourist coming to Kazan is a woman aged from 24 to 34 years old, married, a middle-level specialist with a higher education and an income of more than 45 thousand rubles.
Traditionally, the reserve-museum Kazan Kremlin remains the most attractive objects for tourists. Last year, 2 million 928 thousand 900 guests visited it. The entertainment complex “Kazan Riviera” is also popular, 837 thousand 712 tourists became its visitors in 2018. The Kremlin Embankment is also gaining more and more popularity. In 2018, 1 million 200 thousand people visited it.
Raising awareness of the city depends on its participation in major tourism exhibitions, noted Daria Sannikova. “In 2018, Kazan was represented by its own brand stand at international tourism exhibitions in Minsk, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Warsaw, and Istanbul. A presentation of the tourist potential of Kazan was held at each exhibition, brochures were distributed, videos about Kazan with virtual reality glasses were broadcast, and targeted meetings were held. We managed to achieve the inclusion of Kazan in the booklets of tour operators in Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona. Previously, they have been offering only Moscow and St. Petersburg”, said D. Sannikova.
Also, the tourist potential of Kazan was presented in Bulgaria, Germany, Turkey, and four Chinese cities: Shanghai, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, and Yiwu. The work on the promotion of Kazan in the international tourist market will be continued this year.
Over the past two years, there has been an increase in the number of hostels in Kazan. “This shows the stability of the tourist flow to our city”, said Daria Sannikova. “If in 2017, there were 10 hostels opened in the city, in 2018, there were 30 more. I’m glad that most of them open with a certificate of the official classification”.
The work on installation of tourist navigation continued in Kazan. In the autumn, 18 monument-stands, 28 information direction indicators, and 4 maps of Kazan in Russian, Tatar and English were installed in the city.
Speaking about the most ambitious events over the past year, the Director of the Tourism Promotion Committee highlighted the quest “Ai da Kazan”, the festivals “Fanfares of Kazan”, “Delicious Kazan”, “Window to Spain”, “KyshDaKar-Fest” and “Night Bicycle Fest”. The head of the city instructed to continue implementing creative event events in Kazan.