“Walk the City” campaign is held in Tatarstan

In 2019, the Non-profit Organization “Fund for Development of Single-Industry Towns” launched an initiative to hold a campaign “Walk the City” in all 319 single-industry towns of the Russian Federation, aimed at raising awareness about the attractions of single-industry towns on the Internet.

As planned by the organizers, the project participants should put tourist sites: museums, attractions, cinemas, hotels, hostels, shopping centers, gas stations, as well as information about them on the Google Maps online map.

“The interest in single-industry towns among tourists is undeservedly low. The project “Walk the City” is designed to fix this and attract not only Russian, but also foreign guests”, said Irina Makiyeva, General Director of the Fund for the Development of Single-industry Towns.

According to estimates by the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, Maksim Oreshkin, who heads the Supervisory Board of the Development Fund for Single-Industry Towns, 10% of Russia's population lives there today. “The development of single-industry towns is an important task for the whole country”, emphasized Maksim Oreshkin.

In Tatarstan more than 200 people took part in the campaign in May. Together they “walked” seven single-industry towns - Zelenodolsk, Elabuga, Nizhnekamsk, Kamskie Polyany, Medeleyevsk, Naberezhnye Chelny and Chistopol. As a result, about 300 new tourist sites appeared on Google Maps.

“Touristic interest to Tatarstan is growing every year. Only last year, the tourist flow to the republic increased by 9.6% to 3.4 million. At the same time, tourists came not only to the capital: 2.9 million people visited the Kazan Kremlin, half a million - the Bolgar State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve and the Sviyazhsk island -town. 58 thousand and 55 thousand tourists visited Chistopol and Tetyushi respectively”, the Minister of Economy Farid Abdulganiyev cited as an example statistics.

In 2018, 346 thousand foreigners arrived in Tatarstan, which is a quarter more than a year earlier. The total volume of services rendered in the field of tourism and related industries in Tatarstan by the end of 2018 grew by almost 37% to 28.3 billion rubles.