Greater Altai: A Systemic Development Plan

If I were to name the key features of the project, I’d highlight three main components. First, a large-scale analytical effort focused on the spatial distribution of tourism assets across a territory that is currently leading the country in tourism growth and is highly attractive for investment. Second, the delineation of key development zones: our colleagues developed a methodology and a matrix of criteria for assessing how prepared various areas are to receive tourists, particularly in terms of infrastructure. This zoning helps identify where investment in tourism projects is most promising today. Third, the question of positioning – describing new types of tourism products that may be unique to Greater Altai and unlike anything offered in other regions. These are distinctive features that set the area apart from, say, the Urals or the European part of Russia.

We at ProGorod (a VEB.RF Group company) oversaw the projects – as a reminder, there were twelve of them – in the role of qualified client. That meant we developed a unified methodology and terms of reference, reviewed deliverables, liaised with the regions, and acted as co-authors of all the project decisions.

All of the work was done through interdisciplinary consortia – especially with market consultants in the hospitality sector, since this kind of project requires an in-depth look at the accommodations market. In this case, NF Group served as the lead analyst. We tried not to rely on guesswork, but instead grounded everything in reality – what’s actually needed and what’s actually feasible. We made use of big data and didn’t limit ourselves to official statistics–we worked with everything available. The ROMIR institute handled the sociological research: to identify the tourist profile, they built a representative sample of over 2,000 qualified respondents from across all federal districts using a panel-based methodology.

We consider our work on the Greater Altai project a success. The regions were genuinely engaged and incredibly helpful. I want to give special mention to the working group from Biysk – they were deeply involved and proactive. We also received a lot of support from Mezhdurechensk and Kemerovo. In terms of the planning solutions and overall project work, it was an absolute pleasure to collaborate with the team at the Moscow General Planning Institute. They’re a large and experienced group capable of executing projects of this scale with efficiency and skill.

I’d say that in terms of scope and scale, this project is one of the few of its kind for us. Our Institute carried out a comparable piece of work in the field of tourism for the Caucasian Mineral Waters region.

Here, for me personally, as the project lead, it was especially interesting to collaborate with a consortium of professionals and a large number of experts who each contributed their own analytics.

We then compiled all this data – sometimes confirming, sometimes disproving our initial assumptions. As part of the project, we developed more than one methodological approach to problem-solving, including methods for calculating tourist flows, prioritizing development zones, and working with extremely large data volumes.

Among other things, I’ve never before encountered this level of engagement from the client side – I want to thank Kseniya and her team; they can rightly be called both co-authors and originators of several key ideas in the project.