Intourist will work on attracting international tourists to visit Kazan

September 5, an agreement on cooperation between the Kazan administration and the Intourist external-economic joint company was signed in Kazan by Ilsur Metshin, the mayor of Kazan, and Aleksander Arutyunov, the president of Intourist.

The agreement is principally aimed at cooperation in promoting Kazan as a touristically attractive city on Russian and exterior markets, advancing material and technical base of travel industry, development of tourist routes, running through Kazan.

Aleksander Arutyunov stressed the importance of the signed document for Intourist. He announced that he believed there would be an increase of foreign tourists coming to Kazan by 25-30 percent.

Participation in international exhibitions where Intourist will present Kazan as an interesting tourist destination will be one of the instruments in promoting our city abroad.

According to Aleksander Arutyunov, his company will be active during the Universiade that Kazan will host in 2013.

The agreement also provides for construction of a three or four star hotel Intourist in the capital of Tatarstan.

Sergey Ivanov, the chairman on the Committee for external relations and tourism, also took part in the signing ceremony.

As reported, Kazan was visited by 850 thousand tourists and sightseers in 2008 (8% more than in 2007). The number of international tourists came to 70 thousands, including 23 thousand from far-abroad countries.