Unique natural and climatic characteristics provide Crimea with a resort reputation since Soviet times. The tourist flow on the peninsula didn’t stop even during the difficult 1990s. The Crimean tourist business is facing, perhaps, the most challenging time: the Ukrainians don’t go to the peninsula and the Russians can’t provide a number of tourists necessary for profitability. The third bad season can be the last one for the Crimean tourist business, especially in view of Russian tax innovations.
Tourist potential of Crimea
Recreational opportunities of the Crimean peninsula are 615 km of beaches, numerous mineral water springs, healing muds, the hot sun and the warm sea. Besides, tourists may rely on trips to nature reserves, visits to caves and cave cities, ancient ruins and medieval fortresses as well as numerous museums of the peninsula. Those who love extreme sports came to the peninsula to enjoy scuba diving on Tarkhankut, hang-gliding in Koktebel or reach Crimean mountain peaks with climbing equipment.
More than 600 health resort facilities, 4.5 thousand mini hotels and resorts, more than 10 thousand landlords ready to offer accommodation options to suit every taste and budget have been waiting for tourists before the occupation.
Since the beginning of the 2000s, the Crimean tourist industry has grown exceptionally fast: mini-hotels, guest houses, villas and private hotels accommodating millions of tourists every year emerged on the coast like mushrooms after the rain. Most of them are empty waiting for a successful season for the third consecutive year.
How many tourists spent their vacation in Crimea?
In the days of the Soviet Union, when up to 8 million people came in Crimea, 5 million of them were from Ukraine. The number of tourists has decreased significantly after the collapse of the USSR, but there still were 2-3 million tourists here. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the tourist flow in Crimea sharply increased and reached a record number of 6 million people in 2013. Ukrainian Crimea would have every chance to beat the Soviet record if it were not for the annexation.
It is quite difficult to calculate how many tourists visited Crimea during the years of occupation, because local ‘authorities’ cheerfully report about the millions of tourists by using the data of passenger traffic through the Simferopol airport and the Kerch ferry line. As a result, they calculate everyone – both those who arrived and departed, those who came on a mission and businessmen and even Crimeans, thereby creating the illusion of tourists visiting the peninsula. By using a more advanced method, Ukrainian experts estimated that not more than 1.5 million people came as tourists in Crimea in 2014 and 1.7 million – in 2015. Accordingly, a larger number of people won’t come in Crimea this year.
Ex-minister of resorts and tourism of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Aleksandr Liev
According to the ex-minister of resorts and tourism of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Aleksandr Liev, ‘May holidays’ – the period from April 29 to May 15 – always have been an indicator of a successful coming season. For example, no less than 70 thousand people visited Crimea in these two weeks since the mid-1990s.
“We received about 100 thousand people during those two weeks from 2000 to 2011. This figure was growing – Crimea received 201 thousand tourists during the May holidays in 2013 (the last year before annexation),” Liev said.
The tourist flow reduced sharply since 2014: only 25 thousand people came to the peninsula in May of 2014, in 2015 – 30 thousand and in 2016 – 35 thousand people that is 4 times less than in the period before occupation.
Season of 2016: facts and fairy tales
The peninsula’s ‘authorities’ expect an increased tourist flow this year. For example, the state council’s ‘speaker’ Vladimir Konstantinov expects not less than 7 million (one million more than it was before the annexation). However, the ‘Minister’ of Tourism and Resorts Sergey Strelbitsky predicting 6 million tourists during the entire 2016 doesn’t share the optimism of the ‘head’ of the Crimean parliament.
“Making predictions is a thankless task. It depends not only on the summer season’s results. There is a certain capacity that we can’t increase in summer, but we have the off-season. Now the Ministry takes a stand on the figure of 6 million people. However, we understand pretty good that we will have 6 million tourists if we carry out a successful autumn-winter campaign,” Strelbitsky said.
It is easy to calculate the real tourist flow to the peninsula by answering only two questions: 1) who represented the majority of tourists in Crimea; and 2) in what way did the tourists get the peninsula.
Administrative boder
So, the majority of tourists were the Ukrainians – about 4 million a year. The number of Ukrainians decreased dramatically after the annexation: up to 0.5 million in 2014 when there were railway services in operation, and in 2015 – up to 6% of the total number of tourists (about 100 thousand). The Ukrainians are afraid to go there and they obviously can’t afford current prices in Crimean resorts. Today largely the Russians are going to spend vacations in Crimea, because it is possible for foreign tourists to enter the peninsula legally only with special permits issued on the basis of sound reasons (tourism is not among them) through checkpoints on the territory of Ukraine.
Visiting the occupied territory from mainland Russia leads to criminal cases and a ban on entry to Ukraine in the future. Both Western countries and the states, which are members of the Customs Union together with the Russian Federation, warn their citizens about this. In particular, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus explains the order of entry into the territory of Crimea and the Kazakhstan MFA asks its citizens to “think twice” before taking this trip. UNESCO included the Tauric Chersonese museum-reserve into the list of tourist destinations dangerous for visiting (along with Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni ancient monuments). Only few foreigners will have a wish to enjoy the world famous museum after this step, of course, unless they feels the need in extreme tourism.
One of the biggest problems for tourists wishing to visit Crimea is transport communication with the peninsula. 66% of tourists got into the peninsula by train before the annexation.
“4 of 6 million people, including Russians, Belarusians and, of course, Ukrainian citizens, came in Crimea by train,” Liev says.
Railway communication with Crimea was suspended since December of 2014. Flights between Crimea and Ukraine were stopped immediately after the annexation, and the sky over the peninsula was closed to flights. Therefore, today only flights from Russia are operated in the Crimean airport.
“The number of flights is almost the same today as it was before the war (before the annexation – editor’s note). The airport runaway capacity allows serving up to 1 million tourists, which is equivalent to 2 million passengers. The Simferopol airport served 1 million passengers, which was equivalent to half a million tourists, in peacetime,” Liev emphasizes.
Simferopol airport
The figures given by Crimean “authorities” are very different from the real picture. According to their estimates, the Simferopol airport served 5 million passengers in 2015. But don’t forget that the number of passengers includes both those who arrived and departed (divide this number by 2 and we already have 2.5 million). However, not all of them are tourists: taking into account the limited transport capacity of the peninsula, Crimean officials, businessmen and other citizens, who have previously traveled to Kiev by train or car, are actively using the aircrafts. Now it is impossible to get to Moscow by any other transport.
You can get the peninsula by car in two ways – through three entry / exit checkpoints on mainland Ukraine (“Chongar”, “Kalanchak” and “Chaplynka”). Actually, this way is only for the Ukrainians (Russians as foreigners need to get a special permit to enter). From Russia, it is possible to get to the peninsula only through the Kerch ferry line that increased own carrying capacity by almost 4 times, but again it doesn’t mean that all passengers are tourists.
So, it turns out that the maximum number of tourists who will come to the occupied peninsula doesn’t exceed 1.7-1.8 million people that is several times lower than the expectations of Crimean ‘authorities’.
Olga Efimova
for Pod Pritselom
(End here)
