Money alone is not decisive for the investor: BBC expert on development of tourism in Armenia

Head of BBC regional representative offices for Armenia and several other countries Sergey Stanovkin, who is holding two-day seminar on strategic communication and tourism brand in Yerevan, says Armenia has a great future for tourism development since here everything exists except communication. He stated that the world knows little about Armenia.

“Today the problem is not only to inform, but also to win the competition. In other words, the task is to create an image of the country where tourists would like to visit. But creating it is very difficult, it is easier to inform about tourism destinations.

It is difficult to create the image of a country which is in fight with competitor countries for attracting tourists,” the BBC representative said.

Stanovkin said the next key factor is that the tourism branding responds for country’s investment attractiveness which is quite a contemporary issue for Armenia. He said the great efforts that are made for attracting investments to Armenia are visible. But the problem is how the investor can see the country’s investment opportunities.

“You create an investment platform, but how can the investor be informed about it? Moreover, whether the investor will have time to see that platform? Here there are many problems. There are countries that have developed economy, and by boosting the tourism potential, they have large number of investors.

Investor comes to that country on his own will, comes to the country where it is convenient for him. Money alone is not decisive for the investor, there are other factors as well that guide him to be an investor or not,” Sergey Stanovkin said.