Russia's top tourism official said he hopes that the decree, which mirrors a current law allowing foreigners a three-day stay in Russia with no visa if they arrive on cruise ships, will help mitigate an expected drop in the number of foreign tourists amid the global financial crisis.
St. Petersburg officials also hope that it will give a boost to the northern capital, which is one of seven port cities affected in the decree and where tourism keeps a significant amount of residents employed.
The decree is set to come into force one week after it is published -- on May 20 -- a government spokesman told The Moscow Times on Tuesday on customary condition of anonymity.
It regulates the arrival of foreign tourists into ports in St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok and Sochi, as well as the towns of Vyborg in the Leningrad region, Korsakov in the Sakhalin region and Novorossiisk in the Krasnodar region.
The decree, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, does not give foreigners complete freedom of movement during the three-day, visa-free period. They are allowed to travel throughout the country but only according to the itinerary of their respective tour groups and together with their fellow travelers.
Federal Tourism Agency head Anatoly Yarochkin said at a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week that the new law could lead to a doubling of the number of foreign tourists arriving in Russia by sea through St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad through the end of next year.
"There will be no sharp increase ... but in 2010 there will be an evident, noticeable increase," Yarochkin said, according to comments posted on the government's web site.
At the meeting with Putin, Yarochkin called the decree a "real anti-crisis measure," Interfax reported.
Travel industry lobbyists are skeptical, however. Irina Tyurina, a -spokeswoman for the Russian Travel Industry Union, said the effect of the decree would be minimal.
"In the circumstances of the crisis, the financial component will be decisive," Tyurina said Tuesday. She conceded, however, that the measure would be "convenient" for tourists.
According to the State Statistics Service, 2.3 million foreigners vacationed in Russia last year. The figure for foreigners is contentious, however, because authorities in St. Petersburg, the country's top tourist destination, recorded 2.3 million foreign tourists last year.
Last year, 500,000 tourists visited St. Petersburg by ferry, Yarochkin said, though he did not indicate how many of those were foreigners.
St. Petersburg, which claims 80 percent of the country's tourists, expects a 30 percent drop in foreign tourists this summer in the wake of the global economic crisis, Mariana Ordzhonikidze, head of St. Petersburg's tourism department, told The Moscow Times last month.
Tourism is crucial for St. Petersburg's economy, employing 18 percent of the city's working population, or 500,000 people. Should the sector sag, some 10 percent of tourism-related jobs could be cut, Ordzhonikidze said.
St. Petersburg's tourism budget for 2009 has been slashed to 73 million rubles ($2.2 million), compared with 120 million rubles in 2008, forcing it to cut advertising in the regions and abroad.
The World Tourism Organization expects international tourism to fall by up to 2 percent in 2009, its first decline since the organization began tracking the industry's growth in 2003.
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