On September, 14 the members of the Arkhangelsk Region Government approved the long-term target program “Development of Domestic and Incoming Tourism in Arkhangelsk Region for the period from 2011 till 2013” with the total financing of more than 1,1 billion rubles. Amount of financing from the regional budget totals more than 57 billion rubles that exceeds many times the means, which were usually assigned for such kind of events last years.

The program, worked out by the Ministry of Youth Affairs, Sport and Tourism of Arkhangelsk Region, is aimed at forming and developing of the effective competitive tourist cluster in the region providing the growth of the tourism contribution to the social and economic regional development.

The basic foundations of its implementation are priority support of the tourist infrastructure development in terms of the private-public partnership mechanism, building of an effective promotion system of tourist recreational potential of Arkhangelsk region, strengthening of the intersectoral coordination in the tourism sphere and introduction of scientifically founded innovations in the regional tourism development processes.

The regional program for the first time provides for the considerable investment component, which presupposes building financing and engineering infrastructure objects’ modernization, new tourist objects’ creation. So within the frameworks of the program it is planned the assignment of subsidies on a competitive basis to the municipal entities of Arkhangelsk region for capital construction and modernization of tourist objects with long pay-back period (electrical networks, water-supply and canalization systems, treatment facilities, etc.). Additional financial resources for the priority tourist investment projects implementation will be involved within the frameworks of federal target program “Development of Domestic and Incoming Tourism in Russian Federation (2011-2016)”.

The program also provides for the state support provision to the organizations of tourist industry on the interest rates subsiding on the taken credits for the building and reconstruction of hotels, tourist bases and guest houses on the territory of Arkhangelsk region.

Certain complex of program measures is dedicated to the support of development of system personnel training for the tourist sector in the region. So within the program is planned to establish a centre for training and retraining of personnel for the tourist and hospitality spheres with the aim of providing for accessibility of tourist education for specialists from the southern districts of Arkhangelsk region.

As expected, the program will enable by 2013 to increase domestic and incoming tourist inflows in the region by 16 percent, involve complimentary investment in the tourist sphere and increase the amount of paid tourist services by 21 percent, providing for the tax returns from the tourist industry organizations in the regional and municipal budgets.