Projects

Any successful world tourism destination has a strategic tourism plan that states the region’s positioning for a particular period of time and explains what actions need to be done to implement that plan based on the present situation versus the final goal.

The strategic marketing plan “Vision-2025” was first composed in 2014 and is expected to be finalized in 2017. It consists of:

• an expanded analysis of Vladivostok as a tourism destination based on its infrastructure, service level, random brand positioning, and SWOT analysis;
• analyses of target markets, market segmentation, need and demand analysis, analysis of visitor’s profile;
• research and analysis of Vladivostok’s identity and public image;
• formulation of city’s positioning statement that will give an exact answer to the question “Why should people come to Vladivostok?”;
• development of a Vladivostok brand concept;
• selection of tourist products and events that are considered to be main accelerators for increasing tourist flow.

Strategic marketing plan “Vision-2025” will be the basis for developing the company’s communication strategy and creating new information products.

Online address: www.vladivostok.travel

First launched in May 2015 as a part of the development of the Pacific Russia brand concept, the initiative “Discover Vladivostok” has become a positive example of successful city positioning and promotion through digital media.

In 2016 “Discover Vladivostok” received the prestigous Russian award “Silver Light” in the area of public relations development.

Today “Discover Vladivostok” is:

• an online tourism guide about Vladivostok city and its suburbs in Russian, English and Japanese languages; in 2017 it is planned to launch versions in Chinese and Korean languages;
• social accounts with traffic of 400 to 450 thousand people every month;
• highly professional team of specialists in the tourism industry;
• 50+ content and promotion partners including a large number of private authors.

Using the example of the “Discover Vladivostok” project, initiators of Pacific Russia Tourism Alliance are demonstrating to other regions and tourism industry players the reliability of this approach and the team’s professionalism. It is further planned to create marketing products for the entire Pacific Russia region similar to “Discover Vladivostok” and unify them under one large-scale brand.

Key interested parties:

• social and cultural facilities;
• HoReCa;
• travel agencies & excursion bureaus;
• domestic driving services (taxis, public transport).

Tourist pass is a special card designed to promote the tourism complex for individual travelers. Tourist passes are cards with different amounts of money loaded for visiting restaurants, social and cultural facilities, and using public transportation.

Implementation of the Pacific Russia tourist pass program should be completed in 5 years. The preliminary part of the program will be developed in 2017.

Key interested parties:

• MICE committee;
• hotels;
• airline companies;
• travel agencies & excursion bureaus.

Today, the main problems in event tourism in the Far East are lack of strong communication between MICE committees and the absence of cooperation among tourist market players. Based on commonly accepted practice, it is recommended to build an all-in-one event schedule and to co-promote a group of events or the whole seasonal event calendar, and not to advertise only one particular event. This method allows for reduced expenses in attracting travelers.

The plan to create and promote an event calendar is aimed at solving the following problems:

• monitor all current interesting tourists events in Vladivostok that are in line with the destination marketing strategy and select key events for building the calendar;
• organize new events to fill gaps in the event schedule;
• develop proposals for arranging events into groups based on analysis of tourist profiles, to increase demand during slow seasons and to encourage transport operators and other businesses to include event tourism in their main business interests;
• establish communication channels to promote the event calendar;
• organize special events for promoting the event calendar to target audiences.

Key interested parties: travel agencies and transport operators.

Moscow travel industry exhibitions are entryways to the Russian domestic and the international global tourism markets. Despite the fact that Moscow is located far away from our region, the Central part of Russia is still considered by PRTA to be a key target market. However, because of strong competition it is important for Vladivostok to stand out by building an attractive image, destroying negative perceptions (far, expensive, frightful) and emphasizing its unique qualities (multicultural environment, cuisine, the romance of discovery, taiga forest, ocean, gateway to Asia).

Through the combined efforts of PRTA and other members interested in entering the «Moscow» market, a virtual travel experience of Vladivostok will be created and shown at the exhibition to encourage a desire to visit the city. Moreover, plans for a complex tour package «Vladivostok and its suburbs in 5 days» are being developed.

Later the developed concept may be used (with all necessary adjustments) during Vladivostok presentations at other Russian and Asia-Pacific exhibitions.

Key interested parties:

• marine terminals;
• vessel agents;
• inbound tour operators;
• social and cultural facilities;
• restaurants & cafés;
• retailers.

Considering opinions of internationally recognized experts in the cruise industry, it will be critical to promote the main Pacific regions of Russia (Kamchatka, Sakhalin and Primorye) on the Asian cruise market in a collective format, combining the energies and capabilities of the three regions in marketing promotion at industry exhibitions and forums in Asia.

PRTA proposes itself to become the single marketing agency that will create the marketing plan for further promotion of Russian Pacific ports as cruise tour destinations on the Asian market.

Today, the Asian cruise market shows rapid growth, and continued sustainable market development is forecasted for the next 15–20 years. Entering this promising market segment requires building systematic communication and data exchanges with markets of Japan, China and South Korea taking into account market differences in visitors’ needs and acceptable business standards in a particular cruise market.

Implementation of a cooperative marketing program tailored to promote Pacific Russia as a cruise tourism destination could become the pilot project that demonstrates the viability of unifying the various Pacific Russian regions under one brand but with several differentiated tour products that are attractive to both Asian consumers and cruise operators.

Key project participants: tour operators and excursion bureau.

Optional tours that are not reserved beforehand but bought spontaneously after arrival have become more popular among individuals and small group travelers.

A scoring system will be developed to evaluate the quality of tours based on international criteria in order to build a database of high quality tours and to create a platform to publicize and promote tours through the online travel guide www.vladivostok.travel and other sites.

Key project participants (only for PRTA members):

• restaurants and cafés;
• manufacturers of seafood and fish products;
• MICE organizing committee.

The project was initiated by Port Café, the pacific cuisine restaurant, and is already supported by PRTA.

Creative development by market participants of the concept of Russia Pacific Food can transform this tourism product, which is still in the process of formation, into a “pearl” for attracting tourists to all regions of Pacific Russia and become one of the main factors motivating travelers from Russia and APR countries to come visit.

“Pacific Russia Food” is an interesting and exciting project whose details have been revealed only to PRTA members. However, we can list some key areas of activity:

• development and promotion of seasonal gastronomic calendar for Vladivostok (gastro calendars for other regions - Kamchatka, Sakhalin – will come out in the future);
• promotion of “Pacific Russia Food” video-blog on Russian and Asian social accounts;
• organization of restaurant gastro-festivals at the local, regional, cross-regional, and national levels: crab festival, scallop festival, shrimp festival, seaweed festival, fern festival, smelt festival and so on;
• evelopment of “Pacific Russia Food” brand and further distribution of products through HoReCa and retail chains.