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Brest eager to welcome over 50,000 visa-free tourists in 2019
BREST, 15 February (BelTA) – Brest intends to attract over 50,000 visa-free tourists this year, BelTA learned from Brest Mayor Alexander Rogachuk on 15 February.
The mayor said: “Thanks to the visa-free travel program more and more people come to Brest and explore it anew. The fact that we saw 18,500 visa-free tourists in 2018 confirms it. Grodno is a good reference point we should strive to match. This is why we would like to triple our number [of visa-free tourists] this year.” On the whole, in 2018 Brest earned $3.5 million by selling tourism services or twice as much as in 2017.
The Brest mayor met with representatives of 22 Polish travel agencies on 15 February. He noted that Poland citizens account for over 70% of the foreigners coming to Brest without needing visas. “This visit is very important. The main task is to attract more Polish tourists, so that they could come to our city and get familiar with the common history. We would like to show that Brest is an open city, which always welcomes guests,” the mayor said.
Polish travel agencies, which operate in Warsaw, Olsztyn, Bialystok, Lublin, Gdynia, Poznan, Lodz, and Katowice, are in Brest Oblast on an advertising trip for three days. A roundtable session with Belarusian colleagues was arranged for them as well as a tour of places of interest in Brest. They are also expected to visit Brest District, Kamenets District, Pruzhany District, Ivatsevichi District, and Kobrin District.
“Seeing the interest of Polish tourists, we’ve arranged an advertising trip so that representatives of the travel agencies could see something new and could bring more tourists to us. Literally last week a meeting took place within the framework of medical and recreational tourism. Specialists working in this area were made familiar with our sanatoriums and showed a strong interest in what they saw,” added Nikolai Glushenya, Head of the Sport and Tourism Office of the Brest Oblast Executive Committee.
In 2018 Brest Oblast welcomed tourists from 55 countries as part of the visa-free travel program.
The advertising trip for Polish travel agencies has been arranged by the Brest Oblast administration in association with the Embassy of Belarus in Poland.
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