As the vice-president of the Russian Union of Tourism Industry Sergey Korneev stated, the tourism business brings a little less than 10% of the revenue portion to the budget of St. Petersburg. According to him, in 2003, inbound tourism brought 8% of the budget's revenue portion, outbound - 1.3%.
Now St. Petersburg ranks 8th in the rating of world cities by attractiveness for tourists. According to UNESCO, 15% of residents of different countries know about the existence of the city. These factors create opportunities for growth of tourist flows to St. Petersburg from abroad. As Tatyana Efimova, the head of the marketing department of the Grand Hotel Emerald, noted, in the current season St. Petersburg is attractive for foreigners also because the largest city hotels keep prices for rooms in dollars. Thus, the average cost of a room at the Grand Hotel Emerald is $320-360 per day.
At the same time, as ABN notes, the entertainment industry in the tourism business of St. Petersburg is still poorly developed. This was stated by Viktor Davranov, the general director of ZAO Davranov Travel. According to him, this point has a very negative impact on the overall situation in the tourism industry. "The tourist infrastructure of the suburbs is poorly developed. We organize 30-35 bus excursions a day to Pushkin, to see the Amber Room, while such unique centers as Valaam and Sortavala remain inaccessible to mass foreign tourists, because it is simply impossible to get there - the roads are very bad," Viktor Davranov noted.
According to him, the "deterring factor" is also the lack of a sufficient number of middle-class hotels and hostels in the city, difficulties in obtaining a Russian visa, unequal conditions for foreigners and Russians when visiting museums, as well as the lack of decent entertainment infrastructure - a water park and similar facilities for young people.