International Travel Fair in Kunming
During the period from the 19th to 22nd of November our Partnership once again arranged the representation of the Russian Federation at one of the largest in APR countries international tourist fair CITM, carried out in Kunming this year.
Representatives of 8 regions of Russia including 4 regional tour administrations and more than 10 tour operators, in total – 16 participants took part in the exposition. Regional tour administrations were represented by Irkutskaya oblast, Khabarovsky Krai and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The most representative one was the delegation of Krasnoyarsky Krai.
Deputy Head of Rostourism Alexander Rad’kov, Consul of the Russia Federation in Guangzhou Sergey Kotov, representatives of Russian diplomatic corps in PRC, Chinese officials attended the Russian national booth.
Within the frame of CITM the considerable number of information products about Russian tourism in Chinese was distributed: materials of Federal Agency for Tourism, the magazine ‘Russia today’ published by Embassy of the Russian Federation in Beijing, brochures of the partnership ‘The World without Borders’ containing the information about Russian tour operators accepting Chinese tourists. All these materials were in great demand from the fair visitors.
During two days numerous representatives of tour business of China attended the national exposition, separate meetings with the number of largest tour companies of PRC were carried out arranged with the aid of our Partnership and also Russian tourist club in Guangzhou.
Particularly, there was especially interesting discourse with the leadership of the famous and large Chinese tour operator, CYTS Company. Executive Director of the Partnership Roman Rysev, Minister of tourism of Krasnoyarsky Krai Eugene Pyankov and tour operators from Siberia took part in it on the Russian part.
Representatives of Krasnoyarsky Krai told about their possibilities concerning the receipt of Chinese tourists, invited the leaders of CYTS to make a familiarization trip to be carried out at this Russian region. The important constituent of the conversation was the matter about choice while arranging tourism to Russia of reliable tour operators which would guarantee the proper quality of the services to be provided.
Chinese professional public traditionally showed an interest in the trips to the largest cities of European part of our country. But besides that, possibilities of directing tourists from PRC to Irkutskaya oblast, Yakutia, Krasnoyarsky and Khabarovsky Krai were discussed at the fair. In connection with that within the frame of these interviews and business meetings Executive Director of the Partnership ‘The World without Borders’ informed the representatives of mass media and tour business of China about some indicators of statistics being worthy: threefold enlargement in the current year of the number of visa-free group tourist trips from PRC to Saint-Petersburg and to Irkutskaya oblast. With the purpose to expand possibilities of arrangement of new routs for the citizens of China around Russian regions the Partnership ‘The World without the Borders’ gave to our Chinese partners variants of tourist programs for the number of regions, particularly to the Russian North.
During the days of work of the fair CITM Chinese part officially proposed the Partnership ‘The World without Borders’ to be an organizer of the unified exposition of Russia at WTF, the international tour fair in Shanghai to be carried out at the end of May 2010. | 
