According to the results of social research, provided by research agency Ipsos marketing and Ernst & Young Company, 73 % of interviewed mountain-skiers from Russia would like to visit Northern Caucasus Resorts. At the same time, 89% of all respondents showed their intention to know more about the future resorts, 75% of potential tourists consider them very attractive.
"Northern Caucasus Resorts historically favorite place for Russians to spend holidays. In the Post-Soviet period accents had moved to the foreign countries, but nowadays people’s opinion is changing, and we can see it in the results of the social research. Very pleasant to see an active support for the development of the resorts showed not only by potential tourists, but also by the native residents of the region",- says Head of Advisory Services at Ernst & Young in CIS Igor Boldyrev.
Northern Caucasus Resorts, presented for the participants of the research in the concept, were called more preferable place for rest on condition of availability, than other tested mountain-ski resorts in Bulgaria, Austria, Finland, France and Sochi.
The participants named the most significant arguments for visiting new resorts such as general interest for the region, affordability of the resorts and the wild nature of the Northern Caucasus. At the same time, were named reasons against visiting the Caucasus, such as issue of safety, substandard, overpriced service and low transport availability.
«Those problems, which potential tourists are talking about, are being solving at the current stage of the project. The security system of our resorts is being developed on the level of Russian Government, our staff concept is also being supplemented there. We had already announced our plans for developing a wide network of air and railway transport infrastructure», — said Deputy General Director of OJSC «Northern Caucasus Resorts» Rostislav Murzagulov.
Social research shows that Sochi, Dombay, Tcheget and Elbrus are currently the most visited resorts in Russia. Furthermore, mountain-skiers call Northern Caucasus resorts one of the most popular places for visit, — after Switzerland, Austria and Sochi.
«This point is revealing in discussions with our opponents, who are sure, that it is impossible to provide enough amount of tourists for the Northern Caucasus resorts. Of course, Sochi is a beautiful place. However, the Black Sea coast resources are almost exhausted, herewith mountain ski zones of Krasnaya Polyana are a high prices resort, which makes them too much expensive and unavailable for lots of tourists. Our resorts are oriented predominantly for middle price dispersion. Besides, recently our company was entrusted to develop the Elbrus — the powerful tourism brand, which in common lets us to forecast the high demand of the new resorts »- says Murzagulov.
As he says, «NCR» are convinced that there will not be any problems with the local population of the Northern Caucasus in attitude towards issue of the future resort guests from Russia and other countries. Locals are mostly tolerant to tourists of all nationalities. The results of last year’s opinion poll, when 63% of respondents in the regions of North Caucasus Federal District said that would have met all the tourists with the same hospitality, confirm this.
«We are doing our’s best to make people all over Russia to know that they will find friendly treatment and hospitality of local people in the Caucasus. That’s why we pay a lots of attention not only for the company promotion, but for stimulation of the interest to this region and recreation there. We have provided contest of the positive news from Caucasus and found out that there are much more positive events than negative accidents, which are regularly presented by mass-media. Also, there is a shooting with our support of the film based on an excellent „Prisoner of the Caucasus“ movie, which should remind the audience what is the real Caucasus», - Murzagulov concluded.
Social research of consumer preferences of potential tourists regarding North Caucasus Resorts has hosted by major international accounting and consulting company Ernst & Young in common with the marketing research agency Ipsos Russia. This research took place in april, 2012, on a territory of 20 regions of Russia, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.
For this research was applied on-line interview method, each interview lasted 30 minutes. More than 2,5 thousand men and women aged 18-54 were interviewed. 80% of respondents have an experience of skiing or snowboarding for 5 years.