Skift Take
The RUSSPASS app is a significant competitive step in increasing Russia’s appeal as a tourist destination. However no e-visa, no dice. The two must go hand in hand.
Lebawit Lily Girma
Taking a trip to and checking out Russia has actually been simplified for international travelers– at least, that’s the message the federal government is sending out with RUSSPASS, a one-stop digital app and platform that soft launched in July 2020.
Tourists and locals can search and reserve a number of experiences listed on the app– flight deals to Moscow, train tickets to the interior throughout all regions, hotel stays, trips and dining establishments– directly from their smart devices.
There are also choices to reserve museum tickets, sign up for multi-day tours, go on self-guided strolling routes or find historic and cultural suggestions from the incorporated travel magazine.
It’s probably not what the typical traveler would anticipate from a nation typically stereotyped as an “evil empire” by the West from the Cold War days and one where politics transcend tourism, with allegations of meddling in U.S. elections and having doubtful human rights practices.
However busting this stereotype through travel seems to be what this public-private sector digital app effort seems to go for, by facilitating Russia’s accessibility to explorers in a post pandemic world, once borders are less limited. Digitization and multilingual access to take a trip booking and info, in Russian, English and Spanish in the meantime, might improve Russia’s tourist profile just as it looked for to do so in 2019 and help it contend on a more global scale.
Now a year in because its launch, RUSSPASS counts over 3,000 travel tips, and has actually been used by over 1.3 million individuals, more than 90 percent of whom are Russian citizens, according to the Department of Info Technologies of Moscow. And it makes good sense given the ongoing constraints and the domestic tourist boom.
“Even prior to the pandemic, numerous tourists kept in mind that they lacked quality online resources for comfortable travel,” said an agent from the Department of Information Technologies of Moscow in an e-mail declaration. “This problem has actually now been solved. At first, the new project was created for tourists from abroad, but after its launch it became apparent that it must concentrate on domestic need and hence support the market.”
It’s a chance for Russia’s tourism organizations to reach and get ready for more consumers– 600 of them are currently listed on the app so far– in what the federal government states is an increase in the middle of a tourist slump. Other partners of RUSSPASS consist of technology companies such as OneTwoTrip for booking hotels and tickets, ONELIA, for the multimodal travel plans, and Sberbank of Russia.
“In general, RUSSPASS is motivating the healing of inner-city and domestic tourism by providing non-trivial itineraries and services. An essential decision was to develop the service in various languages– this makes it possible to speak about travels in Russia and make them more appealing to foreign tourists who will be able to visit our nation when restrictions on international travel are raised worldwide,” Moscow’s Department of Information Technologies informed Skift.
In exchange for tourist businesses being listed on the app totally free, the government’s agency contracts with stakeholders allows it to get an agency charge on sales from trips, activities, and reservations.
“We are constantly working to simplify the usage and purchases. For example, we have actually made the purchase of activities a one-click action, preventing the ‘shopping basket.”
Using a single tool for trip planning and organizing without needing to consult dozens of sites is what the Russian government is banking on, along with the app being a source of inspiration for future trips. The next action will be to study feedback from users and partners and introduce new services and options “to make RUSSPASS an online assistant in the pockets of tourists traveling in Russia,” according to the Russian government.
An Old-fashioned, Pesky Visa Process
In 2020, tourism and travel’s contribution to Russia’s gdp amounted to $40.1 billion, a drop of 47 percent compared to 2019 levels, according to the World Travel and Tourist Council, while international visitor spend tanked by 69.6 percent.
Domestic tourist has actually constantly dominated for Russia, but its push for the worldwide market continues. And while RUSSPASS is a significant leap for Russia’s travel market and its future foreign visitors, there’s still one major snag: Russia’s complex and expensive traveler visa process.
To date, a U.S. citizen looking for a tourist visa to Russia need to send a finished print application, pay a $160 cost by money order, and send a photo in addition to an “invite letter to Russia from a host person or organization.”
The visa bureaucracy was cut in January 2021 when the Russian Federal government introduced a nationwide e-visa procedure for 52 countries for the first time, consisting of EU member states, India and China, while unsurprisingly excluding the U.S., UK and Canada. A significant advance in opening up for tourism, the Russian e-visa provided one-time traveler entry approval into Russia for 16 days, with a lighter and free application process and no required invite letter.
But the e-visa option was paused that exact same month “in order to guarantee state security, secure public health and prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus disease.”
By contrast, a handful of locations, consisting of in Africa, made e-visa applications accessible through comparable digital platforms to increase local tourist healing during Covid.
Over a year into the pandemic, Russia’s e-visa process stays suspended and the RUSSPASS does not consist of an e-visa application choice.
Welcoming the e-visa, integrated with RUSSPASS, might be a video game changer for Russia’s still untapped tourism industry by drawing worldwide travelers post pandemic who remain in search of new experiences along with remote, huge landscapes.
UPGRADED: The story was upgraded to get rid of a sentence on future access of e-visa through RUSSPASS, per the RUSSPASS group which has actually informed Skift that the declaration was not factually validated by public relations before it was offered to us.