Department of Culture and Tourism — Day 2
The morning of our second day was dedicated to leisure activity. Parts of our group worked on the report of yesterday’s business meeting, some went for running and the others explored the city of Odessa. We met at 1pm for a short briefing during a delicious Odessian lunch. After that, we met with the Deputy Head for culture and tourism development of the City Council of Odessa. Later, we held our reflection meeting and discussed our further plans with refreshing beverages. Since we had some time left before dinner, we decided to walk through Istanbul Park had a stop at the opera house and took some photos at the Potemkin stairs. Finishing our dinner in the vegetarian restaurant “True”, we headed over to our Airbnb and closed the day with an intensive working session.
For our second business meeting we met with Alona Diachenko, deputy head of culture and tourism department. The City Council is split into 44 departments which develop strategies for tourism and economy. Ms. Diachenko firstly introduced us to the strategy of economic and social development 2022 of Odessa. The focus of the strategy lies on the 5 T’s — Transport, Tourism, Technologies, Trade and Trust. She also mentioned that Odessa has a strong potential and the main idea is to use this potential during the whole year instead of mainly during the summer time. There is communication and cooperation needed among government, universities, businesses and NGOs in order to reach this goal. A special organizational structure already exists. Businesses and government cooperate in special working groups to discuss problems, make some improvements and to find solutions. Therefore, they launched several projects to promote and strengthen the tourism potential.
They focus on five tourism forms. One of them is cultural tourism due to the rich cultural history of Odessa. Furthermore, they also see huge potential in MICE tourism. Besides this, they also have gastro and wine tourism with a strong focus on local products and “Odessa cuisine”. Another field is the recreational tourism which is running well due to the good price-quality ratio. Moreover, Odessa is a club city with a vibrant nightlife and concerts.
All these forms of tourism were mostly used by 70% of domestic tourists in 2017. In the other 30% of foreign tourists, Belarus, Poland, Russia, Turkey and Israel are major markets. They also want to open-up to new markets namely the Chinese and Western European countries as Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy and the UK. To attract this new market segments, different actions have been implemented. For instance, they steadily increase their network by attending different trade fairs and exhibitions in and around China and Western Europe. They already managed to sign several contracts, for example the Chinese translation of their website. By attending these exhibitions, they want to change their image, which has been negatively affected by the war in the East-Ukraine. Furthermore, they broadcast the safety of Odessa. Live cams of the city were installed to tackle this issue. Additionally, “Odessa visits you” is a road show around other cities in Ukraine in order to make Odessa a more popular holiday destination within Ukraine. It is planned to extend this to other cities around the world in the future. Journalists and tour operators are also invited for famtrips to show the beauty of Odessa. Furthermore, they want to increase the value of the city by implementing new attractions like monuments, arts and special events. One of their new invented event is the festival week. During one week, about 50 different festivals take place in Odessa from an ice cream festival over an art festival to a general food festival. These events are not only to attract tourist but also to encourage locals to identify themselves more with their own city. To promote this, they set a strong focus on social media advertisements.
Another way to strengthen the bonds of the locals with Odessa is the involvement of students from universities to educate them about Odessa and to encourage them to support tourists by guiding them the way through the city. Moreover, Odessa city council offers internships for graduated students to motivate the youth to stay in Odessa and help to further develop the city.
The Odessa city council is a local authority body with its own budget and own responsibilities. They also rely on and use the strategy of the government of Ukraine for infrastructure, medical, financial and other issues. Therefore they have to report to the mayor and deputy mayor.
Odessa is looking for foreign investments due to their own limited budget. There are special groups for attracting investors for the development of the city. Decisions are based on these groups and the needs of businesses. The department of economy decides who can attend the special groups. According to Ms. Diachenko this process is based on criteria like tax-payment and social projects for instance.
Since the public transport system has come into age, they plan a huge infrastructure renovation in cooperation with the European Bank of Reconstruction. Focus lies on buses, trolleys, signalling and providing the option to purchase online tickets. However, the renewal doesn’t affect Odessa’s whole public transport system. For instance the Marshrutkas are in private hands and do not want to renew their vehicles since they prefer to put the money they earn into their own pockets. Another driver of Odessa’s tourism are Cruise ships. During the conflicts the number of cruise ship arrivals dropped from 153 cruise ships per year to only two. According to Ms. Diachenko the big cruise line Costa will likely come back in 2019 to Odessa.
Interesting business meetings in a wonderful city. Follow this blog and our social media to see further exploration!
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Kevin S.
Studyweek Odessa — A project from nine students of HTW Chur
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