Tourism — Exploring the heart of the East
The “Paris of the East” and how it is explored.
Tourists mostly visit Ukraine because of its historical background and on the economic side for its low prices. Visitors are interested to learn about the Holodomor, a brutal famine which millions of farmers fell victim to during 1932/33. Furthermore, partly opening the area around Chernobyl led to attractiveness among adventurers, exploring the ghost towns that were formed by the nuclear catastrophe 1986. Concluded, a respectable part of incoming tourists are interested in so-called dark tourism, tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy.
With the European Football Championships in 2012, hosted by Ukraine, sex tourism discovered a boom. There is also a steady growth in health tourism, due to the fact that the private doctors have a good education and offer good quality services for inexpensive prices. Foreigners form western Europe, Israel, the USA and England are travelling to Ukraine to get a cheap but good retreat. [1]
Facts&Figures
As we can see on the following figure, the Ukraine achieved its all-time high in foreign tourist arrivals in 2008, shortly before the world economic crisis. During the mentioned crisis Ukraine experienced a downturn of around five million visitors. It slowly recovered and in 2013 they almost reached to the same numbers as in 2008. Since the Crimean crisis and its escalation in 2014, the numbers of tourist arrivals halved. In the following two years, a slight recovery was finally visible.
According to State Statistics Service of Ukraine (2018), out of these 14.2 million visitors, 10.8 million are from the neighboring countries — Moldova, Belarus, Russia, Poland, Hungary. Considering this, many visitors aren’t filling the touristic infrastructure like hotels, restaurants and stores. Most of them are using Ukraine either as transit country or they’re crossing the country for work or simply visit friends and family. [1] [2]
Odessa Tourism
In 2016, the Odessa City Council created a 64-pages report. The so-called “Strategy of Economic and Social Development of the City of Odessa until 2022” includes analysis of the actual state of tourism, which is summed up and displayed in the following SWOT-Matrix.
The analysis shows an awareness of weaknesses and threats. On this basis, the City Counsil of Odessa works on realizing The Strategy Odessa 2022, which includes many new implementations and improvements in the touristic sector. The central objective is to create a comfortable environment for tourists in Odessa. To reach this goal, they want to develop all types of tourism which would be the cultural, entertainment, gastro, ethno, event, educational and business tourism. Furthermore, the goal demands to create new touristic infrastructures like open-air museums and ethno-cultural complexes. To provide international service quality, the amount of professional trained specialists needs to be raised. In addition, they implement a tourist card of Odessa so tourists can move around easily.
The second goal of the strategy is to develop an information infrastructure for tourist services. This includes a tourist portal and the promotion of the city brand. Furthermore, they want to create an extensive information and service network with the implementation of a QR-codes system and free information stands in the city, all run by volunteers. Another idea are guided tours in 3D.
The third goal is to promote and position the city as an international tourist center, interesting to be visited throughout the year. Therefore, they will hold annual forums, congresses, conferences and presentations, which will contribute to the development of business tourism in Odessa. The plan is also to participate in international and national tourist exhibitions, fairs, seminars, conferences, congresses, meetings and shows. Besides this, Odessa is developing programs of cooperation with twin cities and the first twin city agreement will be signed with Batumi, Georgia. [3]
Port of Odessa — Economic cornerstone
The Odessa Marine Trade Port (OMTP) is the biggest port of Ukraine in cargo handling volumes and the largest passenger port of the Black Sea. The passenger terminal is capable to serve up to 4 million tourists a year, which was last reached in 2007. The Port of Odessa employs up to 8’000 people directly in the port and about 100’000 workplaces in private and state enterprises, which activity is directly or indirectly connected with the port’s operations. The technical capacities of the port provide handling of over 900,000 TEU Containers, more than 25 million tons of dry and 25 million tons of bulk cargoes annually. [4] These figures show the importance of including the port into the Strategy 2022, as it embodies the cornerstone of Odessa’s economy.
References
[1] Melkozerova, V. (8. March 2018). Kyiv Post. Top reasons why tourists say they come to Ukraine: https://www.kyivpost.com/business/top-reasons-tourists-say-come-ukraine.html
[4] Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine. (15. April 2018). Odesa Seaport Authority. Technical characteristics: http://www.port.odessa.ua/en/about-port/technical-characteristics
[3] Odessa Сity Сouncil. (1. January 2016). Official Site of Odessa. Odessa Development strategy 2022: http://omr.gov.ua/images/File/DODATKI_2017/Ekonomika/Strat_eng_05_17.pdf
[2] State Statistics Service of Ukraine. (9. February 2018). Ukrstat.org — State Statistics Service of Ukraine. Economic statistics / Economic activity /Tourism: https://ukrstat.org/en/operativ/menu/menu_e/tur.htm
Liked what you read? Stay tuned for next Sunday’s post about Culture in Ukraine and Odessa!
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Kevin S.
Studyweek Odessa — A project from nine students of HTW Chur
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