Russian-Japanese tourist future on the Kurile Islands

August,8 in Federal Tourist Agency (Rostourism) the meeting of Russian and Japanese tourists’ authorities representatives and tour operators took place. The questions of organization of joint activities on the Kurile Islands Kunashir and Iturup were discussed there.   

During the discussion they have agreed about the pilot tour conduction in October 2019. The islands have the unique nature characteristics and the tourist infrastructure as the hotels, the museum on Kunashir island and the thermal water complexes.  

“Japan is our target market in the incoming tourism sphere. That is why we are in the ongoing dialogue with the Japanese Tourist Agency on mutual tourists’ flows growth, the new level of development was reached after the negotiations in May 2019 in Tokyo. We consider the successful promotion of our first pilot tour on the Kurile islands in October 2019 agreement and the plans on fulfilling such tours on the regular base as one more certificate of the joint economic interest presence. We are on the way to the joint aims, we plan to get up to 200 000 tours from each side annually to 2023,”-stated Zarina Doguzova Rostourism leader. 

The Kurile Islands can impress with their nature resources: the active volcano Golovina (Kunashir Island) and the active volcano Baranovskogo (Iturup Island), the White and the Black rocks, Kipyaszheye (Boiling) and Goryacheye (Hot) lakes and Stolbovskaya ecological trail. Rostourism will support the activity of Russian TO in their attempts to develop the incoming and out bound tourist flows. This support is within the content of the support of domestic industry business program