One of the most relevant trends in tourism is the creative component: an effective tourist product will necessarily include interactive elements, workshops, and interactions with local communities. People go to people, thereby making the transition from a relationship in the form of B2C ("business to consumer") to H2H ("human to human"). How creative tourism affects the development of territories was talked about at the V International Municipal BRICS+ Forum.
A significant factor of competitiveness for territories today is not only material and social resources, but also creative capital: the ability of the city to give birth to new creative solutions and attract the creative industry. Natalia Belyakova, Director of the Department of Expedition Activities and Tourism Development, spoke about the practice of the Russian Geographical Society within the session "Creative Capital of Cities: Best Mechanisms and Practices of Multiplication":
“Tourism today is able to become an independent driver, launching a new life cycle of a territory. We have shown how this works in practice by using the village of Khatanga in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Taimyr Peninsula, as an example. In the 1970s, the activities of the Khatanga United Aviation Squadron unfolded here: the local airport was the only one in the Eastern Taimyr, thanks to which the activities of aviation enterprises in the Arctic were successfully developed, and active industrial developments were also carried out. However, in the post-Soviet space, activity was stopped and everything fell into disrepair. Now a new life cycle of this territory is being launched thanks to tourism. The powerful ethnographic component, the rich nature of Taimyr, which has preserved its unexplored attractiveness, as well as unique sites, such as the Mammoth Museum in a real glacier, turn Khatanga into a center of tourist reboot. Thanks to the active efforts of the RGS, infrastructure is being created here, old museums are being revived, new places of attraction are emerging, and the village itself is turning into a starting point for travel to the North Pole.”
Another successful example of the territory's driver is the Kaliningrad Region: finding itself in an economically difficult situation, the region has relied on several creative industries, including tourism. Here, thanks to the Russian Geographical Society, the Baltic Fortress becomes a new point of attraction, which in a few years has turned from a closed site into a fascinating historical location. The tourist flow here is growing exponentially: this year alone, more than 23,000 people visited the fortress, which undoubtedly affected the development of the region, which found itself in a difficult economic situation.
Tourist routes were created on the territory of the fortress under the guidance of the RGS’s experts, audio guides were recorded, and the exhibition space was replenished with new museum objects found during the expedition. Thus, a new exciting site on the tourist map of Russia is emerging out of the seemingly ordinary city of Baltiysk.