According to RA government’s tourism development strategy, the number of foreign tourists visiting Armenia by 2030 is possible to reach up to 3 million. However, if we continue with these paces, hardly the strategy can become a reality. Yesterday, the “Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015” was published, where Armenia ranked the 89th among 141 countries dealing with tourism. Armenia’s position compared with 2013 has fallen by 10 points. This year, the list of the world’s most competitive countries in the tourism industry leads Spain, France, and Germany. The information about Armenia in the report is published by “Economy and Values” Research Center.
According to the report, low level of staff training in the tourism industry, lack of qualified labor force, high air-ticket prices, stringency of environmental regulations, low level of enforcement, the airport charges and so on adversely affected the position of our country. Chairman of “History and Unity” NGO, also Rector of the Armenian Institute of Tourism, Robert Minasyan, however, disagrees with these indicators. “Neither the prices are high nor is the staff bad. Everything is normal.”
According to his, if the number of tourists is decreasing, then it may be due to the war situation. “At any time, if this-or-that region is in a war situation and close to this country, it mostly negatively affects the tourism, tourism is the most vulnerable industry. People are interested, we do not live 50 years ago, now the media and the Internet disseminate the information very quickly and people postpone their visit to the country, thinking of visiting another time.” The expert in tourism industry brings the example of the European countries, where the number of tourists is dropped by 40-50% due to the reduction in the visits of Russian tourists, which is due to the worsening of relations between Russia and Europe. Robert Minasyan is sure that in 2015, Armenia has become more recognizable to the world. “For not losing our positions, today, a correct and thoughtful common policy would be conducted to correctly introduce Armenia.”
The expert is sure that after joining the EaEU, we will have tourists from the Eurasian Economic Union countries. To the question of Aravot.am that the report never mentions that the cause is the war situation that Armenia recorded a regress, rather than it brings simpler causes, for instances, the environmental legislation is violated, the air-ticket prices are expensive and so on, Mr. Minasyan said that the authors of the report would no wise indicate the fact of war situation. According to him, after the government’s open sky policy, the air ticket prices are fallen by about 40 percent. To our observation that in this era of the Internet, the tourist quickly learns that the mines in Armenia are operated in an open manner, causing serious harm to the environment, and it’s enough for him not to choose Armenia, Mr. Minasyan said, “Mines are operated in all countries.”
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To our response that it is not due to such violations of the law, Robert Minasyan said, “There is both this kind and that kind of methods, in other words, the problem is that those who operate and violate the fulfillment of the contracts should explicitly be punished. You cannot operate and receive revenues but not to make re-cultivation. We should speak not of the country but the people who are operating it and do not invest some of the profits to restore them and preserve the nature.”
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
