According to Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Yuri Molchanov, who supervised the development of the program, the goal of Petersburg is to become the main tourist destination in Central and Eastern Europe, competing with the largest tourist centers of Western Europe - Paris, London and Rome. Molchanov emphasized that the St. Petersburg government is ready to bear the costs that the implementation of the Program will require. In his words, it is necessary not only to actively promote the city on the world market, but also to significantly improve the quality of services offered to tourists.
Currently, hotels annually receive about 3.5 million tourists, including 2 million from Russia and CIS countries, and about 1.5 million from far abroad. The BCG study revealed that Russian tourists come to St. Petersburg for a longer period, but spend significantly less during their stay than tourists from far abroad. Therefore, it is necessary to attract more foreign guests and increase the duration of their stay in the city, as well as create conditions conducive to higher spending by domestic tourists.
According to the study, the tourism sector of leading cities such as London and Paris, which annually receive 25 and 15 million tourists respectively, enjoys significant support from local authorities. In many countries, they not only actively support the activities of tourism offices and provide informational support for tourists' stay in the city, but also spend up to $10 million annually on marketing in addition to funds invested by the private sector.
According to BCG estimates, the development of the St. Petersburg hotel sector will require at least $1.5 billion in private investment over the next 5-6 years. The city government is already providing administrative and legal support to investors in the hotel sector. The program is based on the "5x5x5" strategy, which sets quite serious goals - to enter the top five largest European tourist cities: within five years, to annually receive 5 million tourists, which will increase the influx of tourists by 1.5 times relative to current indicators, bring an additional $200-250 million annually to the city budget, and create at least 50 thousand jobs in the tourism industry and related sectors.
The Boston Consulting Group is a leading global consulting company, a leader in developing business strategies. The initiator of the project was the Government of St. Petersburg. The project work was conditionally divided into three stages: assessment of the current position of St. Petersburg as a tourist center, development of proposals for a strategy for the further development of St. Petersburg in this capacity, and creation of a program of specific measures to achieve the set goals.