St. Petersburg’s tourist offices will be opened abroad

St. Petersburg is the first Russian region, which will open own independent foreign tourist offices. First information center under the brand “Visit Petersburg” will operate in Paris in the coming days. By the end of this year the Northern Capital authorities plan to create at least 10 such centers - mainly in European countries, as well as in India and China. As the Head of the Tourism Development Committee of St. Petersburg Andrei Mushkarev reported at a press conference, the project is implementing on the basis of the state-private partnership, without investment from the municipal budget. The "Lex Systems" company (which is the Russian visa operator in more than 30 countries around the world) is the city's partner in this project. In information center the tourists, who plan to visit Russia, will be able to get information about St. Petersburg and its hotels, tourist attractions and the most convenient routes of travel. Today, the company has opened 80 Russian visa centers in thirty countries around the world, including in China. Focused on Asian traffic, the “Visit Petersburg” offices also will operate in the near future in Taipei and Hong Kong. According to the "Bulletin of ATOR", it is also planned to open centers of “Visit Petersburg” in Italy, Sweden and Latvia before the high season. According to estimates, in 2017 St. Petersburg will host no less than 7 million tourists, that will be slightly higher than in 2016 (6.9 million people, 2.8 million of which are foreigners). The plan of the city is to increase the number of tourists two times during the next seven years - up to 13 million tourists by 2023.