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cepts and most of all bear in mind that building a destination brand requires answers to the following questions on behalf of potential visitors:
• What are the main things I like about the destination?
• What sort of place is it?
• How does it make me feel?
• How would I describe it in one sentence?
• What makes it different from all other destinations?
ЛИТЕРАТУРА
1. Мошняга Е.В. Концепт «культурный туризм» в системе концептов международного туризма // Знание, понимание, умение. 2009. № 3. С. 173-178.
2. Hall C.M. Tourism Planning: Policies, Processes and Relationships. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2008.302 p.
3. Serageldin I., Shluger E., Martin-Brown J. (Ed.) Historic Cities and Sacred Sites: Cultural Roots for Urban Futures. Washington: World Bank Publications, 2001. 420 p.
4. Tourism at World Heritage Cultural Sites. Madrid: UNWTO: ICOMOS, 2004. 175p.
УДК 338.48(470-25)
ЛОРЕНЦО МИЧЧИ
ПОДХОД СИТИ-МЕНЕДЖЕРА К РАЗВИТИЮ ТУРИЗМА В МОСКВЕ
Целью исследования является туризм в Москве. Рассматриваются сферы, которые работают успешно, а также те, в которых есть возможности для совершенствования. Эти аспекты определяются с помощью SWOT-анализа (выявляются сильные стороны, слабые стороны, возможности и угрозы), результаты которого оцениваются глазами сити-менеджера. Двигаясь от окраин к центру российской столицы, автор бросает взгляд на текущую ситуацию в городе и анализирует, насколько конкурентоспособными эти территории могут быть на глобальном туристском рынке. Взгляд сити-менеджера сопоставляется с видением на будущее развитие города главы Комитета по туризму и гостиничному хозяйству города Москвы С.П. Шпилько. Ключевые слова: туризм, Москва, сити-менеджер, «Золотое кольцо», SWOT-анализ.
Tourism in Moscow is the target of research done in the article, finding out, what is working well, and if there are areas with room for improvements. All this will be evaluated in a SWOT-analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), looking at it in the eyes of a city manager. Starting from the outskirts, moving to the center of the Russian capital, the article will take a snapshot of the current situation and analyze how competitive they can be in the global tourist market. This will also be confronted with the words of the Appointed Head of the Committee for Tourism and the Hotel Industry of Moscow (Sergei Shpilko) stating his plans for the city future.
Key words: tourism, Moscow, city manager, Golden Ring, SWOT-analysis.
© Миччи Л., 2014
The city manager is a recently re-born position, initially created in Staunton (Virginia-USA) in 1908. The reasoning behind the figure is to have a more pragmatic, neutral to politics, approach to the opportunities offered locally. Exactly like a private manager would run his own business, in this case responding only to the Mayor.
After assessing the situation throughout a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats), a city manager would start deciding where to allocate or remove resources.
This assessment will start with the outskirt of the «Russian capital», historically known as «The Golden Ring». A circular agglomerate of 16 small and big towns (which starts and ends with Moscow city), that throughout time has attracted tourist and travellers. The name was given by leaders in charge of the «Soviet Intourist» to the towns and villages, trying to give an easier, catchy brand for tourists. There, travellers can experience the treasure of Russian culture, history, unique architecture, picturesque towns (older than Moscow) and orthodox frescoes under golden domes.
Within this small cities, are also located some of the traditional factories producing the art-crafts that for centuries characterized Russian craftsmen manufactures. Here we can find the «Gzhel» white-blue ceramics from the homony-mous town, the colourful hand-painted tray of Zhostovo, the handmade shawl of Paslovo Posad, the amazing «Fedoskino Acquired boxes» and finally, what's «express Russia» more than, the Matryoshka produced in Sergiev-Posad.
All these cities are worth a visit. Tours are available from a 3 days package (4/5 towns) to a 13 days package (all 15 towns outside Moscow) by bus, but prices go from a range of €800 to €2600.
Even if the package includes a guide, the language barriers (to really appreciate the area), together with the transportation issues remain the two main problems of the travellers. Streets maintenance is poor and trains to travel through the area are not always available and easy to reach for tourists. This leads to theoretical third problem: the «time-opportunity cost». In this age of low cost flight, anybody can go pretty much anywhere in EU within a few hours of flight or high speed train and without a VISA. So we are wondering, how big is that segment of the market (outside Russia) interested in investing the time and money to see these areas? This leaves the golden ring as possible tourism destination mainly to domestic tourists and to some sporadic adventures tourist.
Moving now to the core of the analysis, we will bring the focus back to «Moscva» as Russians call it. The SWOT analysis starts with the strengths of a destination and here Moscow has a lot to say.
The unique architecture everywhere can only amaze its guests, visiting this city means jumping through different centuries within only a few blocks of distance, from orthodox churches in old style, to the newest and amazing «Cathe-dral of Christ the Savior». From the old style museums, to newest attraction like the planetarium or from the oldest wall of «Kitay Gorad» leading to the luxurious downtown, next to red square. The city (together with Russia's economy) is booming and year by year the improvements are visible. The inner city is cleaner and brighter than ever, with stunning night decorations.
Moving around Moscow is a memorable journey by itself, thanks to one of the most amazing Metro line in the world. Beside being the 3rd largest metro line in
TYPMCTUKA 45
Europe (the 7th in the world) and being among the most frequent service (with train every 3 minutes or less), is recognized to be «the most beautiful Metro line in the world».
«They used to have palaces for king's, we are going to build palaces for the peo-ple!» said one of the main architects of the Soviet subway, and we can only agree with him. Every single station is a piece of art, and its cleanliness is almost unreal. The level of the art-quality is so high, that now the «tour of the Metro-line» basically is a «must do» for tourists. Some issues with its service, will emerge a little later in the analysis, but the ticket price, is certainly not among those. With a standard ticket of 40 rubbles (€0,79) and possible multiple ticket available or student and senior discount, it is among the cheapest line in the world.
Ultimately, from an infrastructural point of view, with four airports, high speed train, buses and metro, Moscow has virtually no issues with accessibility.
The second step leads us to the weaknesses of the city. The first issue that an incoming tourist has to face is obtaining the VISA. This strickt, long, bureaucratic and (sometime) complicated process can easily be a deal breaker for undecided travellers in the process of choosing destination. In the modern competitive tourist-destination market, it is not easy to still justify this hassle for incoming travellers. Right after, the major problem for tourists is (again) language barrier. Without a guide, touring around the city, would be very hard, almost impossible for the low experienced travellers (or certainly not as pleasant as vacation is intended). The English information is sporadic. The city is one of the biggest to tour and public transportations are only in Russian language. In fact, the beauti-
ful metro line has 2 major limits: it can be surprisingly crowded and it is only written in Russian characters. This can be a strong barrier for short time visitors.
Those tourists, who won't use the subway for this reason, unfortunately will be sucked in the second most famous city discomfort: the traffic. Muscovites are very used to it, but visitors often will not calculate the delays that it can cause. Unfortunately these days, the traffic is increasingly frequent, intense and spread thorough the city.
Local weather obliviously is another weakness. The touristic seasons can be stretched to 7-8 months of the year (in the best case scenario), from April to October.
A further important subject, with «room for improvements», is the hotel's accommodation. The Moscow's hotel business, had in the latest years concentrated his offer mainly in the low class or 5 stars hotel. The local hotel market has now a big gap in middle-level rooms' offer, within the city. Only recently, some small improvement on this area have took place, thanks to newly built hostels, capable of satisfying a certain segment of the market and also thanks to new on-line services of pear-to-pear apartment renting, like «Windu». Still remain an issue far from being solved.
Unfortunately there are 2 more weaknesses that can't be left out to this list. Both of them are link to the perception from the tourist point of view. The first one is the so call stereotype towards Russians, because (unfortunately) they can be perceived as cold and impolite. The tendency of not smiling is often miss-interpreted and judge too superficially by outsiders, leading travellers to believe that they are somehow not welcomed. It is a known fact that international hotel
chain seeks employees with no prior experience in the field, finding easier to train to smile, than to re-train to do it. The second miss-perception is that Moscow is also a little dangerous and polluted. Here data shows that the rapid population increased, has had some recent negative repercussions on security and cleanliness, but the same data shows that Moscow is not dirtier or less secure, than any other European capital. Marketing campaigns should play a bigger role in changing this perception. Needless to say that in 2014 not having ANY recycling program in place doesn't do any good to the city image (or to its dwellers).
Back in the 2012 the Appointed Head of the Committee for Tourism and the Hotel Industry. (Sergei Shpilko) released to the press the following statement:
«Moscow had budgeted 349 million rubbles on tourism on 2012 (plus 75 in the regional budget). This was enough to «develop tourism and the tools for promoting it in Moscow», noting that despite the diversity of cultural monuments in the region, there is a lack of interesting tourist itineraries and the problem is that «we haven't found the advantageous way to promote them».
The minister also stressed that «it is necessary to solve the problem of hotels classification in the region, to create new tourist routes, to put up road signs that will show ways to different attractions, to increase the number of accommodation facilities, cafes and restaurant», as we can see the areas of improvements have been know for a while, even if to be fair, the next chapter shows that some progress have been made.
We are coming now up to the third step which covers the opportunities offered by the city. Here we must mention (again) the booming economy that makes Mos-
cow stunningly attractive for many of the international brands, craving to be part of this highly dynamic atmosphere, giving travellers many options for shopping, dining, sightseeing or relaxing. Numbers in hand we can say that Moscow has an answer for all type of requests, offering a total of 665 possible attractions (247 museums, 152 Performances, 147 cultural, 63 landmarks, 25 Outdoors activities, 15 Amusement, 10 Sports attractions, 3 Zoo& Aquarius), 81 tour and activities, 93 night-life options (52 clubs, 41 bars) and 109 shopping options. Numbers are growing almost monthly. Considering that Paris in France has only 655 possible attractions, there is a lot of hope for the future.
2013 has set a new record in Moscow tourism business. According to officials in the industry, Russia's capital was visited by 5,3 mln people this year. The number of overseas tourists hiked by 13%, while the number of those coming from the nearby CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries rose by 8%. Hospitality industry figures have shown that Moscow has finally won the long-lasting race with the neighbouring St. Petersburg and became the most visited Russian city.
Ending, the opportunities section with the growing culinary market present nowadays in the city. Even though the Russian cuisine has a long history, this hasn't found a proper place and visibility in the city. This is an area that could have an appeal to the travellers (and locals) if properly built and promoted. However it would require a synergetic action from the community and a strong re-branding. Other cities like Las Vegas (USA) or Vancouver (Canada) have been successfully taking similar steps, to find their own culinary identity.
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The last (but not least) analysis is about threats. Meaning with it, what are foreseeable problems that must be tackled before it's too late. The number 1 threat that the city faces is its sustainability, since all the loading factors have being long passed. The growing population now reaches almost 12 million people, with a incredible historical growth: 1897 (1,038,625); 1926 +94,44% (2,019,500); 1939 +104,85% (4,137,000); 1959 +21,63% (4,137,000); 1970 +37,96% (6,941,961); 1979 +12,80% (7,830,509); 1989 +14,52% (8,967,332); 2002 +15,78% (10,382,754); 2010 +10,79% (11,503,501) and in 2014 has increased of the 4,32%. As a direct consequence to this demographic increase we already mentioned the overcrowded public transportation and increased traffic (and its related issues).
Local authorities, have been facing this problem and had started investing in a huge project aiming to expand the city to the south (doubling its size!), and planning to relocate there major business activities and its workers, hoping for the de-congestion of the traffic within the city. Though we are still years away to see the outcome of this pharaonic project.
A second possible threat might come to the «open gates» given to the franchising company. As we know, franchising has some up-sides. They offered a chance to satisfy the need of those tourists that like the comfort of known brands. Starbucks, McDonald, Zara, etc. provides customers with the opportunity to move in a familiar ambiance, feeling a little «at home». However if not properly regulated by authorities, franchising business is know for its viral reproducing, often forcing local-authentic businesses to shut down. This is known as «Disneyfication» effect, where «local and genuine» is replaced by «artificial and cheap». Signs of this are already visible in the famous «Arbat street» where very little of the authentic business is left there, having (sadly) lost all his original appeal and unique character.
Now, with this set of information in hand, we can only roll our sleeves up and get started. This was only the beginning analysis. Improvements in the field of tourism is a community project, where new ideas are necessary to feed the process and stay competitive. There is no «one-solution-that-fix-it-all» approach.
And you, where would you start...?
ЛИТЕРАТУРА
1. Мошняга Е.В. Основные тенденции раз- Perspective. NY: Channel View Publications, вития туризма в современном мире // Вест- 2011. 179 p.
ник РМАТ. 2013. N° 3 (9). С. 20-34. 4. Singh Sh, Timothy DJ, Dowling R.K.
2. Brooke C. Moscow: A Cultural History. (Eds). Tourism in Destination Communities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 280p. Oxon: Cambridge, MA: CABI Publishing, 2003.
3. Heeley J. Inside City Tourism: A European 282 p.
