Evgeny Zhadkevich about patriotic marketing

Dairy, the size of a well-fed baby, magnolia flowers, divinely cold port wine and disconnected ATMs - this is Crimea, a territory with an unclear identity, sweet air and a temporary shortage of small change. The sellers of cherries and smoked garfish do not have enough change for change, and the territory itself does not have enough money, which is awaited here like manna from heaven.

The first Crimean season of the so-called transition period will show how our state generates domestic tourism demand. Until now, the task of making one’s own territory attractive for recreation for solvent citizens has not been considered a state task. Ski “ clusters” in the Caucasus remained on paper; not a single large brand comparable to the Golden Ring invented fifty years ago has been created in Russia. At the same time, Belarus, which is so different from Portofino, successfully exploits the myth of pure products and the unique quality of sanatorium holidays, ensuring a record occupancy of its state health resorts not with pensioners-state employees, but with quite wealthy Russians. In addition, the “ last dictator of Europe,” a demonized supporter of serfdom, issued one of the most liberal decrees in the world and freed Belarusian peasants who were ready to host tourists from all formalities and taxes, except for a small patent fee. As a result, agritourism has been thriving there for the last five or six years, with an average bill of thirty dollars per person per night, not counting the heating of the bathhouse.

Russia, with its experience of emergency megaprojects, will have to re-colonize Crimea, which at once lost more than half of its vacationers - four million Ukrainian tourists annually. We have up to five million security forces, so of all the means of persuasion and marketing, we chose simple mobilization. Holidays in Crimea are becoming mandatory for civil servants and the entire loyal-dependent population, which has already given rise to a market of fake receipts for fictitious stays in the Zolotoy Kolos sanatorium, renamed Golden Resort . The next logical step would be to practice handing over your passport to the head of the HR department before the onset of frost. The idyllic picture of police officers, railway workers and deputy prefects vacationing en masse in Crimea is complemented by the fact that the traffic cops at the intersections of the Southern Bank are also from Yaroslavl . According to the taxi drivers, the whole battalion came either to pass on or learn from experience.

Simple patriotic marketing will lead to the fact that the brand of the most promising tourist destination in Russia will be war, and the symbol will be the St. George’s ribbon. From the territory created for an imposing holiday, we will get the world's first trophy Riviera, charged with aggressive rhetoric. You need to turn off this road. Crimea is worthy of a completely different tourist identity, as local historians, owners of boathouses, restaurants and everyone involved in the reception infrastructure cautiously talk about. What really sells well is peace, dolce vita and cultural environment. Gagarina's neo-Gothic estate with a relic park through which you can walk to the neighboring Raevsky estate - a Moorish house by the sea, without railways or cars, with a break for swimming - on such material you can build a more attractive tourist myth than the dull " Crimean".

VEDOMOSTI.FRIDAY - Riviera Trophy