Barents event tourism: Culture, Nature and Adventure.

Would you like to take a bath in the Epiphany ice-hole in the old Russian town and enjoy the balmy heat of the Russian “black banja”? Are you going to taste a honey beer and to listen to the crystal chimes of ancient churches or jazz improvisations on the shore of the White sea in the endless summer night? Or may be you would prefer to experience a snow-safari with the merry blue-eyed huskies in the Arctic tundra? To catch a giant fish in the Norwegian fjord? To spend a night in the Sami lavvo? To feel the icy breath of the Universe under the Arctic sky colored by the Polar lights? Hundreds of musicians in the wintry Tromso Nordlysfestivalen, delicious pies baked by Russian babushkas in Ustyany, amazing mix of contemporary and traditional arts of the Kirkenes Barents Spectacle, wooden chapels on the lakes of the Kenozero National Park, crazy atmosphere of the festival of humor in Solvychegodsk are waiting for you.

This is the unique and manifold Barents region and a very small part of adventures offered by the ingenious Barents tourist managers. The tourist’s resources of the region are enormous and its nature, people, history, energy, contrasts and harmony can conquer any even the most obsessed and exigent guest and the one could only regret that the life is too short to cover all these possibilities. The Barents tour-operators offer their products on the local, regional and global levels. They so far do not have a mechanism of professional communication internationally but the situation is gradually changing and we may in the nearest future see some new quality of cooperation between the local tourist’s managers across the borders.

The project called “Development of event tourism in Arkhangelsk oblast and the Northern Norway” shows that the interest towards such a cooperation is very high. The project is administrated by the international committee of Arkhangelsk regional administration and the Intourist-Arkhangelsk from the Russian side and Bedriftskompetanse AS – from the Norwegian side. The seminar arranged by the project coordinators Olga Goldfain and Olga Gorelova on Solovki, Arkhangelsk oblast, in the end of June get together the tourist’s managers from many places of Arkhangelsk oblast, Finnmark and Troms. Professionally they stay on the different level of preparedness for the expansion on the international market. The Russian managers with their wonderful products still definitely need more competence in marketing and promotion their events so the project should probably include some educational and training part of activity. Some few Russian local events attractions like the Arkhangelsk Days of Jazz has already got some promotion on the national and international levels while the others like Kargopol winter chimes festival, Ustjans' folk festival, Solvychegodsk Kozma Prutkov's festival being fantastic by its creativity and national coloring are nevertheless to be completed as a compact tour-products taking into consideration the issues of infrastructural peculiarities, transport accessibility and services.

These matters will be on the agenda of the next stage of project development. Its coordinators are thinking about publishing a common catalog or a web-site on the events attractions in Finnmark, Troms and Arkhangelsk oblast. This would be probably the most important step in the further project development at least for Russia since the number of proposals connected with the norwegian tour-product is still very low on the Russian market while the demand for such products could be rather high. The Russian Union of Travel Industry for example reports that the number of Russian tourists visited Norway in the first three months of 2009 increased by over 30% compared to the same period of the last year while the total number of Russian tourists traveling abroad fell down by 22%. (http://www.ratanews.ru/news/news_24062009_2.stm) The Arkhangelsk tour-operators are going to be in line with this tendency. The director of Intourist-Arkhangelsk Mr. Valery Sidorov informed the seminar participants that as far as in the beginning of this autumn the company is ready to present on the market at least four new tour-products connected to the Northern Norway. In June this year Intourist-Arkhangelsk has arranged the trip of the group of tourists from Arkhangelsk to the Midnight sun marathon in Tromso.

The number of Norwegian tourists to Russia is also growing from year to year but they normally prefer to visit the central Russia and St. Petersburg. The project participants are going to try to change this trend so the Russian part of the Barents region would become at least the same attractive for tourists as the Norwegian.