The 6th Saint Petersburg International Workshop

On January 29, 2013, Petersburg hosted the 6th Saint Petersburg International Workshop, which traditionally opens the tourism business year. The main theme of this master class and the ANTOR Academy, which was held in parallel with it, was the prospects for cooperation between the tourism business and the cultural sphere. The participants in the working meeting organized by the North-Western regional department of the Russian Union of Travel Industry (SZO RST) and the Association of Representatives of National Tourist Offices in Russia (ANTOR) include over 300 specialists in tourist, cultural institutions, and institutions of higher learning.

The roundtable entitled “Tourism and Culture: Prospects for Cooperation” attracted particular interest. The participants in that roundtable included the Deputy General Director of the State Hermitage Museum for Exhibits and Development V.Yu. Matveev and the Head of the Tourism Sector and Special Programs O.B. Arkhipova. In her presentation, O.B. Arkhipova described the preparations for the Hermitage’s 250-year anniversary, about new popular and special programs, and presented statistics about visits to the museum of the past 15 years. In 2012, the Hermitage was visited about almost 2.9 million people, including 970 thousand foreign tourists.
The data in that presentation demonstrated a growth in the number of visitors and a stable increase in the percentage of individual tourists not employing the services of the tourist companies (from 10% in 2011 to 12% in 2012). In addition to tourist (and primarily cruise) companies, the museum often uses time outside its official hours of operation.

According to the opinion of most of the participants in the discussion, the Hermitage’s contribution to the tourist sphere is impressive and constitutes the foundation of the attractiveness of Petersburg and Russia as a whole for tourists.