In Kyiv a strategy for promoting the tourist brand of Ukraine in the world was presented

Chairman of the State Agency for Tourism Development Mariana Oleskiv said that today, if we talk about Ukraine as a tourist destination, according to studies conducted with the participation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ukraine is actually not on the tourist map of the world. «Although it is beginning to appear in certain markets, as it has now appeared in the Saudi market», Oleskiv said.
 
«It is important for us to form a generalized image that will reflect the concept of what Ukraine is, as well as change the perception, how foreigners see us. Because unfortunately, we are still associated with corruption, poverty, devastation, revolution, etc. We need to change the situation and make Ukraine touristy and attractive», Oleskiv stressed.
 
She believes that until foreigners come to Ukraine, it will be difficult for them to form any impression of Ukraine, taking information from tourist videos only.

«Tourism is generally a path, a bridge to change perceptions»,  she added.
 
In this regard, work on system communication has only begun.
 
«We are talking about the fact that we have several tourism products, several  tourist clusters and a lot of tourists with whom we will work. Our target tourist is a cultural traveler (adventure and entertainment tourism) – these are younger people and this is a completely different communication for each of these segments. And a separate section - gastrotourism... We just drew attention to the fact that it is our gastroculture that significantly distinguishes us from all the others», said the head of DART.
 
We are also talking about urban tourism, but it is necessary to expand the geography and go beyond the triangle Kyiv-Lviv-Odesa. According to her, there is a talk about the natural potential and, in particular, about the huge potential of natural parks of Ukraine, it's a talk about how little we know about them. It is also important to develop religious tourism.
 
In his turn, the Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko noted that since last year the industry in Ukraine has been restarted.

«It is no secret that for many years tourism in this country was treated according to the residual principle. The tourism sector even migrated from one department to another. There was no funding as such. And the fact that we still do not have a tourist satellite account speaks to how tourism was actually treated. What does that mean? That we cannot calculate how significant is the contribution of tourism to GDP. For comparison, in countries such as Georgia or Germany, the contribution to GDP is 8% or 9%. This is extremely much», Tkachenko said.

The Minister said that this year a large sociological study is beginning in Ukraine in order to make possible to understand who is actually entering Ukraine, who is actually a tourist. This research is necessary in order to launch a satellite account within the next two years.
 
He also noted there is a work of creating infrastructure projects in Ukraine. «It is important to create cells and special conditions that investors can finance in infrastructure, and first of all in hotel infrastructure», Tkachenko added.
 
He said the tourism industry is about the country's presentation to the world.
 
First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Emine Dzhaparova said that, despite the fact that Ukraine is experiencing external aggression, it continues to develop dynamically forward.
 
«For the Foreign Ministry, the direction of public diplomacy, positive narrative and positive image of Ukraine is relatively new: about six or seven years ago, the Department of Communication and Public Diplomacy was organized, the purpose of which is to talk about Ukraine not only in the context of the challenges that we are experiencing, and we do this every day with classical diplomacy, I mean the issue of the consequences of the war and the consequences of the occupation , but also about the country's potential. The potential as a tourist state, educational, scientific and expert, gastromic, intellectual potential, and about everything that we mean what our country is», Dzhaparova said.

Source: UNIAN