A Study On Development Of Russia Irkutsk Region Baikal Lake And Chinese Market International Tourism Service Trade

The Eastern region of Russia is a vast territory, it includes the Siberian Federal District, as well as the Irkutsk region where tourist destinations along the coast of Lake Baikal are located. Nowadays, the rate of tourism resources development and utilization in this region is not high, tourism programs and infrastructure developments are rather slow, so the overall development of the tourism field in this region is lagging behind that of the European part of Russia. China’s tourism industry has developed very rapidly, so Russia is very interested in China’s tourism market, however at this moment Russia and China’s cooperation in the tourism field has been seeing unbalanced developments. In Russia, tours to China are very popular, but Chinese tourists are not willing to go to Russia. Actually, Eastern Russia is rich in tourism resources and boasts distinct regional characteristics, so there is plenty of opportunity to exploit these tourism resources and many tourism projects can be developed there.In order to boost the development of the tourism service trade in the region of Lake Baikal, this thesis proposes a series of measures, hoping to attract more Chinese tourists who go on tours towards Siberia’s Lake Baikal region, which will improve developments in the international tourism service trade of this region. This program can not only be very useful for the promotion of friendship between China and Russia, but also for a cross-cultural exchange between these two countries.This thesis is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the context of the study and the significance of the research, relevant concepts, ideas, some unique and imperfect features of the thesis. Chapter 2 features analyses of international tourism service trade, its characteristics and trends. This chapter also contains an analysis of the international travel service consumer’s typical behavior. Chapter 3 includes relevant research on the current situation of Russia’s international tourism service trade, including a macro-level introduction and prediction of the developments of Russia’s international tourism service industry, an analysis of Russia-China international tourism trade market and an analysis on Russian tourism market income elasticity of demand. Chapter 4 analyzes the potential of tourism service trade development at the Baikal region that can be exploited. Chapter 5 describes the results of a market study done on Lake Baikal’s tourism service trade and analyzes the main problems of the international tourism service trade in the area of Lake Baikal, Chapter 6 contains recommendations for the development of international tourism service trade in the area of Lake Baikal in order to strive to promote the development of the tourism service industry in the Lake Baikal region as well as a China-Russia tourism service trade cooperation. Finally, Chapter 7 of this thesis summarizes the results from all the other Chapters to provide recommendations on the topic.