Money should be earned rather than taken from tourists
The warmer the sun shines, the more you feel like going to the beach. What is often on our mind is where to go this summer.
Crimean residents think their resorts are unrivaled. The Russians say the same about Sochi. However, practically no other region in the world possesses the same curative and recreational base, and the cultural and tourist environment as the Crimea does, although, as researchers have found, only a little over one-third of the peninsula’s natural curative resources are now being used. Currently idle are not only practically the whole Azov Sea Crimean coast but also many sectors of the Black Sea shore, still untapped is the potential of many medicinal mud and mineral water sources, no use is being made of landscape garden sources of therapy. There are about 1500 museums and monuments here, but only a third of the Crimea’s tourist, historical, and cultural spots are open for entertainment and recreation.
In the past few years, as the peninsula’s Council of Ministers have repeated that Crimean resorts have been the victims of unfair competition and advertising on the part of Russian structures conducting a protectionist policy and aggressive advertising and information campaigns in the interests of Sochi resorts. According to Serhiy Kunitsyn, Prime Minister of the Crimea, the analysis of the Russian press and television shows that about 70% of their publications about the Crimea are negative. The campaign continues this year as well, with Moscow television periodically broadcasting all kinds of inaccuracies about the Crimea. For example, NTV recently showed a spot saying that Yevpatoriya has been lost as a resort because of being polluted by a certain dirty lake at Shcholkino. Who in Russia will know that Shcholkino is 300 kilometers away from Yevpatoriya and its lake troubles are a myth? In addition, the Russian government has cut almost by half the transport fares for its citizens going to Sochi and forbidden the use of budget funds to pay for Ukrainian vacations. As a result, the 124 holiday centers of Sochi received 3.4 million vacationers last year, while the Crimea’s 600 holiday centers scored the same 3.4 million. Over the past decade, the total annual number of vacationers in the Crimea has dropped from 10 to 3-4 million.
I must say that this country as a whole looks on the vacation business as luxury and caprice: when wages and pensions are delayed, when many are barely keeping body and soul together, there is no question of visiting a resort. But the Crimea looks on resorts as its top priority economic sector, which accounts for half its budget revenue and maintains the whole class of resort city residents who earn a living exclusively by catering to vacationers and tourists. There are practically no other sources of income for those living in the coastal area.
The overall economic crisis tells not only on the number of holidays seekers but also on how much they spend. While in 1997 each of them spent an average $350 in the Crimea during the summer, s/he spent only $234 in 1998, and as little as $110 in 1999. This is happening despite the continuing reduction of the total cost of a Crimean vacation: it was an average $22 in 1998, $18 in 1999, and is expected to drop to $16 in 2000. One day of a decent holiday will cost not more than $10 along the strip from Sevastopol to Yevpatoriya and a mere $6-8 at Tarkhankut (Chornomorske district).
It is clear that the overall condition of the holiday sector — this is unusual — is going to improve as our two countries ride out their shared economic crisis. The better the people live, the more willingly and often they will use therapeutic and recreational services. The Crimea’s main task in the last few years has naturally been to stop downward trend in resort occupancy rates rather than developing these resorts, although we have continued to carry out scientific resort-related research and to restructure the sector in conformity with new requirements. According to the journal Kurorty i turizm (Resorts and Tourism), the number of visits to the Crimea has dwindled by 18% in the past three years and by 26% in 1999 as compared to each previous year. The earnings received by Crimean pockets, including its budget, from the wallets of vacationers have been rising by an annual 14-20% over these years, but this was only caused by inflation: in reality, if we use the dollar equivalent, the tourism- and resort- related incomes of Crimean residents have been dropping by 18-20%, while in other countries (Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, and even former Yugoslavia) this sector yields fabulous profits. The difference is that those countries invest big money in the development and advertisement of resorts and tourism, which the Crimea and Ukraine as a whole cannot afford right now. As Mr. Kunitsyn claims, one million hryvnias are spent annually from the Crimean budget on advertising, while Greece spends up to $50 million from its budget and another $38 million under a TACIS project.
The high cost of taking a holiday and transportation, an abrupt mid-summer jump in gasoline prices, extortion at the border, at customs offices, and on the roads, the cumbersome procedure of getting tourist visas all have contributed to stemming the tide of vacationers. Even in October 1999, the Cabinet of Ministers resolved that groups of tourists crossing the Ukrainian border on buses must pay a $120-180 duty. According to Oleksandr Tarianyk, the Crimean Minister of Resorts, this was done “so that we can engage in a heroic struggle against this resolution and win a new victory over the Ukrainian bureaucracy as soon as this summer.” A month ago, the Crimean press published a letter form one R. Vazovas, a Lithuanian vacationer, who recorded cases of extortion on the border and the roads. In his opinion, the road to the Crimea all over Ukraine is studded with so many traffic police posts that it resembles a road in an African country the next day after a coup d’etat. The anti- radar continuously warns about traffic policemen lurking behind every shrub. He concluded, “Having saved $1000 for the next vacation, we will take them to Sochi, Turkey, or Bulgaria, rather than the Crimea, and let Ukraine beg the IMF for money. It wants to take money away from tourists instead of earning it. This year I saw practically no cars with foreign plates on Ukraine’s highways. Europeans must be afraid of going to this country.”
Last season, 167 Crimean holiday centers worked at a loss, while, as Mr. Tarianyk points out, a resort cannot lose money in principle. As a whole, the budgets of all levels and enterprises received UAH 703.5 million in revenue from resorts and tourism. A good job was done by the health and holiday centers of the Ukrprofzdravnytsia Association: 35 of them paid UAH 10 million to the budget. Meanwhile, Ministry of Public Health holiday centers remain unoccupied. On the one hand, they are only funded at 10-30% and are as a rule unprepared for the season; on the other hand, the ministry is doing nothing to attract vacationers and patients. Suffice it to say that most of them are tuberculosis institutions: while almost an epidemic of TB is raging in this country, the curative establishments, which possess effective methods and have successfully combated the disease in the past, are standing idle. This problem calls for a serious solution. Mr. Tarianyk believes this needs the Ukrainian government’s intervention.
Holiday centers belonging to the ministries of Defense and Internal Affairs, the Security Service, business- administration departments of the Cabinet and Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine are called parasites in the Crimea because they, in spite of providing elite service, bring the Crimea no profit. 43 establishments of this kind are exempt from paying land rent and practice what is known as the planned loss system of business, which Crimean inhabitants think absurd. It is calculated that the Crimean budget has lost at least a UAH 76 million in revenue because of them. According to Yalta Mayor Volodymyr Marchenko, “Those who work for public sector money are absolutely free of initiative and have no freedom of action; instead of attracting visitors, they wait for those sent to them.” This results in a low, sometimes even 50% occupancy, at such centers. As Mr. Kunitsyn said, the way these centers work must be changed: they should register as juridical persons at their own places and make all the prescribed payments.
According to polls conducted by the Crimean Ministry of Resorts, 7% of vacationers said last summer they “had not expected everything would be so nice,” 32% “expected it would be better,” and 60% “got everything expected.” Now the ministry is working out a system of raising the quality of services for the vacationers. Among the main measures are improved utilization of curative factors; conducting the accreditation of holiday centers, hotels, and public-catering facilities; and supplying the recreation complex with the produce of Crimean farms. As soon as next year, the resorts of Feodosiya and Sudak will meet Blue Flag of Europe standards, while Saky will increase its output of medicinal and cosmetic preparations based on the local restorative mud; the authorities will raise the output of medicinal mineral water, introduce new resort related curative climatic methods, and new tours. The governmental program of socioeconomic development of the Crimea envisions that in 2002 the number of vacationers will rise to 4.3 million, including 1.2 million on guided tours, up 20% from now.
This year, more VAT free holidays will be sold. Following the example of Russia, the Crimea Resorts Ministry is lobbying for cut-rate tickets for passengers going to the Crimea with vouchers from local holiday centers. Documentation is to be drawn up soon on privileges for private and state- run businesses working on the territory of top priority investment set in the Crimea by a presidential decree aiming to more actively involve them in attending to tourists and vacationers and to attract more foreign investments. By the end of 1999, foreign investment in the Crimea reached $132.7 million, while its service-based foreign trade came to $85.3 million, up almost 10% from the previous year.
The whole 2000 holiday season in the Crimea will be organized in a new way in many respects. The Crimean Tourist Association and research institutions are finally drawing up the systematic program of year-round tourism in the Crimea, listing over 100 itineraries. A center of archeological tourism is being formed on the peninsula under the aegis of the Heritage of Millennia Historical and Archeological Foundation. The Crimea’s guests will be able to take part in exploratory expeditions to and archeological excavations of the peninsula’s most interesting monuments. Various spelunking, literary, architectural, wine-tasting, pilgrimage, and other tours have also been tried out and adopted. The coming summer will see a broader application of such popular methods of specific resort-based treatment as aromatherapy, treatment by means of aromas; ampelotherapy, treatment with grapes; landscape therapy, treatment by contemplating picturesque places; dolphin therapy, treatment by special exercises with sea animals; and other innovations of the past few years.
