BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Thursday February 17, 2005

Belarus, a failure at tourist heaven

Though wedged between the European Union and Russia Russia and rich in history and tradition, Belarus Belarus so far proved a spectacular failure at attracting tourists flocking to its neighbors.

AFP

In 2000, Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko tasked one of his closest supporters, former interior minister Yuri Sivakov, with turning Belarus Belarus into a tourist heaven by 2005 -- a task the government had to recently admit utterly fell through.

Only 64,000 foreigners came to Belarus Belarus last year, in a sharp contrast to the official aim of attracting an annual 1.75 million and an annual profit of 45 million dollars for the impoverished and isolated former Soviet state.

Meanwhile neighboring Lithuania Lithuania last year welcomed a tourist wave equalling its three-million population.

" Belarus Belarus did not reach a level of tourist service that would be in any way acceptable, up to 80 percent of tourist bases and hotels need reconstruction, and only five percent of Belarus's historical and cultural heritage is used with tourists in mind," government experts conceded in a report.

However, investment required to bring Belarus Belarus up to touristic scratch is long in coming, while dozens of medieval castles crumble to ruin and historical churches -- both Orthodox and Catholic -- have to depend on donations from the faithful for their upkeep.

UNESCO so far has provided the largest investment in reconstructing a 500-year-old castle in Mir, some 100 kilometers (66 miles) away from Minsk.

"Not a single one of Belarus' 300 travel companies has invested anything into this country's tourist industry," the sports and tourism ministry's administrative chief Sergei Doronin complained.

The government needed to use "its administrative resource" to force the issue, making one company restore an object of tourist interest, another build a proper road, and a third provide advertisement, Doronin argued.

Travel companies beg to disagree.

"There will be no foreign tourists in Belarus's historical sites until we can lure domestic tourists there," argued Galina Potayeva of the Viapol travel agency, adding that even Belarussian tourists are turned off by poor service.

"We cannot offer tourists local cuisine, worthy lodging, original souvenirs or animation programs. In any country tourists can take a picture with a knight whenever they visit a castle -- anywhere but here, that is," she said.

Even Minsk has no five-star hotels, and its sole four-star hotel -- renovated with the help of a Turkish investor and the Belarussian state -- is rented out as office space for lack of guests, said Sergei Plytkevich of the Riftur travel agency.

Meanwhile, Belarus's only unwavering attraction is its game-rich forests, which allow foreigners to hunt boars, deer and moose for unequaled prices.

SOURCE:

http://entertainment.news.designerz.com/belarus-a-failure-at-tourist-heaven.html?d20050217


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