Moscow proposes creating touristic club of cities in BRICS countries

MOSCOW. June 21 (Interfax) - Creating a tourist club would enable cities and popular travel destinations in the BRICS countries to develop tourism together and share experience, the head of the Moscow Tourism Committee, Yevgeny Kozlov, said at the BRICS Tourism Forum on Friday.

"As the global survey conducted last year showed, city breaks account for one-third of al international tourism. The UN statistics suggest that a majority of the population already live in cities and the urbanization will continue further. The BRICS countries are home to 45% of the global population. These figures suggest that interaction between cities, city tourism really are an accomplished fact and the future," Kozlov said.

BRICS provides a platform for taking inter-city interaction to a new level and potentially benefit each of the countries, he said.

"This is why today we are putting forward the initiative to create a tourist club of BRICS cities and we invite every city and every tourist destination to cooperate. And we assumed that such a platform could become both the basis for sharing practices and an analytical data hub, and in fact, could start a tradition for creating a new type of tourism product," Kozlov said.

The task of this club is primarily to share information, because lack of communication gives rise to stereotypes, he said.

"The more platforms there are for communication on the inter-city level, the fewer stereotypes, on the one hand, and the more economic opportunities for interaction, on the other. And so the platform of BRICS touristic cities potentially can become precisely what breaks stereotypes," Kozlov said

In addition, the club could organize, under the aegis of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, the first BRICS tourism award as early as this year, he said.

The first BRICS Tourism Forum is held in Moscow on June 20-21. It will be visited by delegations from all nine member states: Russia, Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, China, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and South Africa.