A COUNTRY FOR TRAVELLERS

Azerbaijan, which has entered into a period of post-oil development, is implementing major reforms in order to accelerate the development of non-extractive industries. The new economic policy provides for a radical diversification of the tourism sector by encouraging mass budget tourism. This goal is expected to be achieved through lower prices on holiday, development of low cost airlines and introduction of international standards of service. The most important element of the new strategy is to increase the number of foreign tourists, for which the ASAN Viza system is being created to facilitate visa procedures as much as possible.

Readiness №1

The opening of the current summer tourist season coincided with an international sporting event - the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe. This remarkable event in the tourism sector in 2016 will attract many thousands of fans, sports teams, media representatives and others to Baku. The accommodation and leisure of guests involves about 130 hotels and hotel-type facilities operating in Baku. Their total capacity is nearly 12,000 beds. Among them are five-star hotels built in 2011-2015, which added nearly two thousand additional places to the hotel potential of the capital.

"Hotels and travel agencies in the country are completely ready to welcome foreign guests arriving at the Formula 1 competition," says the adviser to the chairman of the Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTa), Muzaffar Agakarimov. "AzTa has created a Baku Tourism Information Centre, which is ready to provide guests with a variety of excursions in different languages." According to him, trips to historic monuments - Qobustan, Yanardag, Atasgah, a holiday on the Abseron coast, as well as trips to scenic resorts in the countryside can be organized for visiting tourists. Together with trips, the guests will have the opportunity to taste wines and various national dishes.

Competitions such as Formula 1 are certainly an important factor in promoting the tourism potential of Azerbaijan, demonstrating the country's ability to organize complex events and receive tens of thousands of guests at the highest level. However, the realities of the past two years showed that the strategy of promoting business tourism, which is justified in a period of economic recovery and higher energy prices, is not always cost-effective in the post-oil period. We are talking about so-called business tourism, which was the dominant trend in the recent past, combining a corporate travel system (corporate travel industry) and industry of business meetings (MICE). For this field, congress halls, upscale facilities for sporting and musical events, as well as other infrastructure designed for international congresses, exhibitions, memorials, business forums, etc., were created in the country. High business activity in the country also stimulated the construction of five-star hotels and upscale resorts in the capital and regions. In addition to the maintenance of the MICE segment, they were also designed for affluent travellers from abroad.

The problem is the price

However, the demand for such services has declined today due to the reduction of public funding for international forums, as well as a prolonged global crisis, which has significantly reduced the business activity of local and foreign companies. In the post-oil period, the vector of the development of the Azerbaijani tourism sector is gradually turning towards mass recreation. The protracted energy crisis contributed to the development of budget incoming tourism. This was furthered by the double depreciation of the national currency, which made the services of local companies more affordable for foreign tourists. According to experts, the rate difference reduced the cost of services at hotels, restaurants, service companies, the entertainment sector and so on by 30-50 per cent. The country's leading sports resorts - Tufandag and Sahdag marked the opening of the summer season with a variety of festivals, mountain hiking, horse riding and cycling, maintaining the former price level.

It is noteworthy that market monitoring conducted by specialists of the Ministry of Tourism and AzTa last spring and ahead of the summer season did not record an appreciable increase in manat rates at most hotels and recreation areas. No artificial increase in prices in recreational areas was observed, but in some cases a slight 10-15-per-cent rise in prices was reported due to the rising cost of food included in hotel services.

The price factor played the role of a driver, markedly increasing the number of tourists visiting our country from former Soviet countries, primarily from Russia. The lifting of international sanctions against Iran also gave impetus to the tourist exchange between the two countries. The termination of mass Russian tourism in Egypt and Turkey and the rise in the price of holidays in Europe (in the light of Russia's currency devaluation) pushed Russian travel agencies to search for alternatives available in nearby countries, including in Azerbaijan. Recently, Russia's leading travel service Travel.ru included Baku in the Top 3 most visited cities (including Sochi and Barcelona) for Russian F1 fans and outlined Azerbaijani seaside resorts in the top five of the most popular summer holiday destinations in the CIS.

This rating is based on the data concerning the reservation of hotels and apartments in resorts for the summer of 2016. According to Travel.ru experts, the most attractive resorts on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan are the Abseron and Yalama coasts as well as Astara and the beaches with black volcanic sand in Lankaran.

It is noteworthy that the plans of Russian companies include not only an increase in the tourist flow to Azerbaijan, but also joint investments in this sphere. For example, during the recent Azerbaijan-Dagestan business forum in Baku, Dagestani leader Ramazan Abdulatipov offered to co-finance the construction of hotels, leisure areas and restaurants, especially on the Caspian coast of Dagestan. Travel agencies of Azerbaijan and Dagestan are studying the possibility of organizing end-to-end tours involving the recreational potential of the region and jointly attracting tourists from other regions of Russia and neighbouring countries. A promising project to support the tourism cluster is the launch of an electric train between Derbent and Baku.

"At the mere touch of a button"

International experience shows that affordable prices, the introduction of modern standards of service and, not least, simpler visa procedures for foreigners are uncontested factors in the development of incoming tourism. A recent decree by President Ilham Aliyev introducing simplified electronic visa procedures will help to optimize this area. The president instructed the State Agency for Services to Citizens and Social Innovation to form a system called ASAN Viza. The new visa mechanism will allow foreigners or stateless persons to obtain visas remotely: simply enter all the necessary data in the electronic database and pay the state fee.

"The ASAN Viza system will make it possible to issue entry visas from a single information portal," said Inam Karimov, the chairman of the State Agency for Services to Citizens and Social Innovations under the Azerbaijani president. "The portal will contain all the necessary information and electronic details after entering which a visa can be issued in electronic format. It will be possible to get an e-visa online within three working days to an e-mail address indicated beforehand."

According to Karimov, the Foreign Ministry is currently working on the list of countries whose citizens will be able to receive e-visas. Their issuance is planned to start in the near future. The new online system for obtaining entry visas will not only save time but also rid foreigners of the need to apply to consulates and other government agencies or pay for additional services of private travel agencies. However, old channels and mechanisms for obtaining a visa remain in force.

The decision to optimize the mechanism for the issuance of electronic visas was long anticipated and was met very positively by subjects of the country's tourist market and international experts. "We strongly welcome the head of state's decision to simplify the procedure for issuing electronic visas and establish the ASAN Viza system," said the head of the EU delegation to Azerbaijan, Malena Mard. "We believe that the capabilities of the ASAN Viza system will be in high demand and serve as a prerequisite for a growing flow of tourists to Azerbaijan from the European Union."

For his part, AzTa representative Agakarimov also believes that the creation of the ASAN Viza system using modern information technology will ensure transparency and efficiency in the process of issuing electronic visas. Reducing the time of receipt to three days will also help to attract more tourists to Azerbaijan from around the world. He said that Azerbaijan recently introduced a simplified visa regime for tourists from the Gulf countries, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.

Simplifying procedures for incoming tourism, the government is making efforts for the development of the outgoing tourism segment, which is experiencing serious problems due to rising prices after last year's devaluation. The first step towards solving this problem was the involvement of discounter airlines in flights to Azerbaijan. In March this year, AZALJET (AZAL division), Hungarian WizzAir and Turkish Pegasus began low-cost flights to the most popular destinations. This decision provided tangible support for local travel agencies working in the field of outgoing tourism, stimulating incoming tourism at the same time and making access to the country's resorts affordable.

In order to support the outgoing sector, a new strategy is being implemented for the expansion of relations with Turkey, the UAE, Egypt and other popular tourist destinations. For example, during a recent visit to Azerbaijan by a delegation of representatives of the Administration of Tourism and the Association of Hoteliers of Egypt, prospects of opening a direct flight from Baku to Hurghada and increasing the number of flights between Baku and Sharm el-Sheikh were discussed. Egyptian hotels offer our tourists new attractively priced tour packages with a variety of services. Azerbaijani travel agencies have entered into similar arrangements with Turkey. In connection with the decline in the flow of tourists from Russia, Turkish resorts offer cheaper tickets this season, while the airlines of the two countries have also increased the number of direct charter flights.

All these factors combined give our country the opportunity to increase the flow of tourists by 20-25 per cent. The existence of such opportunities is evidenced by recent data from the State Statistics Committee, according to which the hospitality and catering sector took second place by the dynamics of development among all sectors of the economy. The successes of the country's recreational sector are also confirmed by assessments of international organizations. According to the UN World Tourism Organization, in the dynamics of the increasing share of tourism revenues in GDP, Azerbaijan ensured a growth of 27.3 per cent last year. In this context, it is also appropriate to cite the statistics of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), which recently published a forecast for 2016. So, it is expected that the country's travel and tourism sector in the current year will secure a growth of 4 per cent, which will put Azerbaijan in 59th place among 184 countries of the world.