In accordance with formerly shaped plans on the 14^th of October in Vyborg the third meeting of the association “The World without Borders” and AFTA was held. This format of mutual meetings between our Partnership and Association of Finnish Travel Agencies is required by correspondent agreement. Russian delegation was headed by executive director of the Partnership Roman Rysev, the Finnish – by director of big Finnish leading tour company «FUTURIST» Petri Novitski.

Our Association traditionally invited to the meeting the representatives of Russian authorities, in particular, the administration of local departments of border and immigration control.  

Roman Rysev presented the survey of cooperation for the period of time passed since the previous similar meeting of unions in the sphere of tourism within the framework of exhibition called MATKA in Helsinki that took place in January this year.  

The parties paid significant attention to the issues of facilitation of formalities for Finnish tourists who visit our country, and it is notably that the representatives of Russian appropriate institutions expressed readiness to constant assistance of our tourist associations. 

The most frequently discussed issues during the meeting were the expansion of practice of non-visa stay up to 72 hours of foreign tourists who come to Russia by passenger trains, by analogy to tourists who go to cruises, and also an ability of getting and forehanded filling in of Russian migration card forms by Finnish tourists in order to speed up passing of formalities at the boundary.      

The corresponding offerings on non-visa stay up to 72 hours for tourists from Finland were previously sent by the Partnership “The World without Borders” to the Ministry of Sports and Tourism of Russia.

During the meeting of the working group the parties discussed the issues on this practice, shared with the information on optimization of process of receipt of Finnish citizens and came to an agreement to broaden cooperation with Russian controlling entities.   

As a positive fact the tour operators noted that under the “peak season” of this year there was a high level of crowding of motor vessel “Karelia” by which a significant number of tourists from Finland comes, and as a result of this, there is an issue of entering into operation of other vessels for bigger amount of tourists is being discussed.  

The offering to provide the Finnish tourist association with necessary amount of cards of immigration recording for forehanded filling in by Finnish tourists when entering Russia was found reasonable among the representatives of Russian authorities.    

In case of when the participants of tour market have questions or misunderstanding concerning respectively different requirements and instructions of customs or migration authorities of Russia, there was a decision made to generalize and send them to the corresponding competent authorities to get the answers.

Coordinator from the Partnership starts working in Vyborg in order to operatively tackle practical issues dealing with observance of visa formalities and efficiently help Russian and Finnish tour operators.