The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional international organization (international treaty) established to regulate the cooperation between the former Soviet Republics.
The Federal Agency for Tourism cooperates with the CIS partners in both bilateral and multilateral formats. The CIS Tourism Council is the primary and most effective tool for Russia to improve its image of a country favorable for tourism.
Currently, the CIS Tourism Council’s primary goals and objectives are:
- improvement and harmonization of tourism legislation being the main condition for creating the CIS single tourism space;
- coordination of efforts in international activities and relations with UNWTO, strengthening the Commonwealth’s position in the global tourism market by developing tourist services of the member states;
- facilitating the mutual promotion of competitive tourist products, removing excessive administrative restrictions and ensuring freedom of access to the countries’ tourism markets, fostering of tourism development and stable growth of mutual arrivals;
- promotion of crossborder, interregional and transboundary cooperation as the necessary condition for ensuring faster growth of tourist services exports in the total volume of trade within the services sector;
- unifying the systems of tourist facilities classification and standardization;
- harmonization of professional education standards, scientific and methodological support for tourism workforce training and upskilling.
In November 2013 (Minsk) the CIS Council of Heads of Government approved the Draft Strategy for Сooperation of the CIS Member States in Tourism for the period up to 2020 that was developed by the Federal Agency for Tourism. The Strategy Implementation Plan for 2018-2020, which was developed jointly with CIS partners, is currently in effect.
