Tourism and hospitality

The Soviet Union had a fairly developed system of domestic tourism, supported by the closed nature of the country, but the situation has changed for the worse in the industry since 1991. On the other hand, a large segment of outbound tourism has emerged, enabling Russian people to see foreign countries. Modern hospitality practices began to appear only in the early 1990s, including high-quality hotels, restaurants offering good cuisine, entertainment clubs, and other services for tourists. Hospitality remains an industry with substantial growth potential, driven by both Russian travelers and foreign visitors. Growth opportunities exist, first of all, outside metropolises (Moscow and Saint Petersburg), in large industrial centres, small towns with а historical past, and natural preserves.
The development of transportation systems and increasing mobility allow travelers to reach their destinations faster and easier. This will pose new challenges for the tourism and hospitality sector, resulting from the growing number of tourists and their demands.
The sector is among the first to show a tendency for reducing the number of intermediaries between customers and services. This is why many mainstream services will gradually become simpler and automated, with integrated transportation systems and fare tickets, logistic tools for individual trips, automated control rooms for synchronizing individual public transport, service robots, electronic guides and simultaneous interpreting devices. Many jobs in the segment will become endangered, with a significant share of business taken up by machines. Already, hotels are replacing their human employees with robots. For example, the Yotel hotel in New York has a special luggage-toting robot, while the staff of the Chinese Pengheng Space Capsules Hotel consists entirely of robots, from the doorkeepers to the waiters.
Since the diversity of choice will make tourists pickier, new travel formats will emerge, along with new capabilities of customizing leisure according to the client’s physical shape, tastes and interests. Search services and applications for travelers will select relevant information based on the profile of a particular client. For example, they will promptly notify the client during a tour about newly opened flea markets or the arrival of a famous antique dealer, if the client is interested in vintage items. This essentially means that the job of a travel agent as we know it is becoming endangered, with respective functions to be performed by special software in the future. On the other hand, a need arises for personalized tours invented by people spiritually close to the client, in a peer-to-peer format.
With the advancement in virtual reality technology, one of the challenges facing the sector will be to compete for customers against the media and entertainment sector, since customers will be able to choose between a trip to the U.S.A. for a live rock festival and VRMMORPG Woodstock. This will force the industry to extend the range of services to utilise this technology, so that tourists can go on sightseeing trips and shows involving augmented reality, games and re-enactments of historical events.
In the conditions of tough competition, clients’ attention can only be captured and held by offering them a unique experience. This increases the importance of area branding, i.e. filling it with objects and game formats allowing tourists to participate in historical events or experience unparalleled emotions. Various aspects of impression tourism are already developing, including food and drink, agricultural, environmental and spiritual tourism. The latter, being one of the oldest types of travel, is gaining a new life, owing to greater mobility. Demand will arise for unusual architectural objects in extreme areas, quick-to-build structures and “shimmering cities”, i.e. temporary settlements where people are united by common interests to create a unique atmosphere and scenario. A bright example of an existing shimmering city is the Burning Man festival. For eight days a year, an entire tent city and exotic art objects spring up in the Black Rock Desert. Over 60,000 people came to live in the city in 2014. Russian equivalents are the Empty Hills and Archstoyanie festivals.