Travel trends
New opportunities –
new impressions
The fact that the tourism industry worldwide is going through hard times – is not news. The main problem of this, which, of course, has not bypassed Belarus, is also well known. The pandemic. It was it that made those negative adjustments that directly affect the service sector. Therefore, the most urgent question was to what extent tourist organizations, including the Belarusian ones, were able to reorganize, in a timely manner to reformat their work. How professionally do they know how to respond to the challenges of the time, what is in the arsenal of travel offers for tourists' requests, in what way, in what direction are new travel trends being formed today? We talked about all this with Pavel Sapotko, a senior lecturer at the Department of Intercultural Communications of the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts. – In your opinion, has the Belarusian tourism industry been able to reorganize itself, responding to the well-known challenges of recent times? – In connection with the coronavirus epidemic, the center of gravity in the country has shifted to domestic tourism, which is a powerful resource in terms of both socioeconomic development, and the revival of regions, and civic-patriotic education. Today Belarus is actively developing cultural, educational, military-historical, rural, industrial, medical and gastronomic tourism. Last year, new tourist programs were developed, excursion routes were updated, interesting ideas of clusters, uniting objects and attractions of several regions of the country at once, appeared. The list of services in Belarusian agricultural estates has been significantly expanded, new proposals related to historical reconstruction have announced themselves. Museums, which are actively introducing various mobile applications, virtual and augmented reality, and audio guides, do not stand aside. All this fills tourism with new content, encourages
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беларусь. belarus 2021
Belarusians and guests to travel, watch, get acquainted with the country. – How do you think the tourism sector of Belarus will develop in the near future? – Today the priority is the creation of new competitive tourism programs. For this, the resource of tangible and intangible historical and cultural heritage, natural heritage, social and cultural institutions – museums, galleries, Theatres, craft houses, folklore centers, parks of culture and recreation, zoos is used. I believe that farmsteads, catering organizations and sanatoriums can make themselves known even more actively. There is a huge reserve of newsworthy events – festivals, holidays, exhibitions and fairs, programs of historical reconstruction. One of the most important tasks is the wide information support of the tourism sector: holding of press tours, organization of special projects with the media, preparation of special issues of printed publications, launching of thematic headings in social networks, preparation of a cycle of programs on television. It seems relevant to create
Pavel Sapotko
